
Book ^^sS 93 



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MIND IN THE MAKING 

A STUDY IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



MIND IN THE 
MAKING 

A STUDY IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



BY 
EDGAR JAMES SWIFT 

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PEDAGOGY IN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY 

SAINT Louia 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1908 



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COPTRIOHT, 1908, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
Published April, 1908 




TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER 

CHARLES E. SWIFT 



PREFACE 

The most significant tendency in educational litera- 
ture to-day is the substitution of the individual for the 
course of study as the basis of constructive pedagogy. 
The rapid growth of American cities has centred 
attention upon the machinery of school systems, while 
the great increase in college attendance and the influ- 
ence of the methods of German universities have too 
completely submerged the individual. Educators have 
lately been taking an inventory and have discovered 
racial and individual assets which had to a great extent 
been overlooked. Some of these formative influences 
are positive forces which should be directed into lines 
advantageous to the individual and to society; others, 
which are negative and tend to mental arrest, should, so 
far as possible, be curbed and repressed. An environ- 
ment which is good in one instance may be inert in 
another. To foster growth it must meet individual 
needs, and these can be learned only by studying the 
native tendencies and peculiar dispositions of pupil and 
student. This book is a plea for the personal element 
in education, and for the extension of the experimental 
method. 

Some of the chapters have appeared in whole or in 



Vlll PREFACE 

part in the Pedagogical Seminary, American Journal of 
Psychology, American Physical Education Review, 
Psychological Bulletin, Bulletin of the Washington Uni- 
versity Association, Journal of Pedagogy, Pojmlar 
Science Monthly, and Studies in Philosophy and Psy- 
chology (Garman Commemorative Volume), The 
author desires to thank the editors and publishers of 
these several publications for permission to make this 
use of the material. 

Edgar James Swift. 



Washington University, 
Saint Louis, Mo., February, 1908. 



CONTENTS 



JAPTER PAGE 

y^ I. Standards of Human Power .... 3 



II. Criminal Tendencies of Boys: Their Cause 

AND Function 33 

'^ III. The School and the Individual ... 95 

IV. Reflex Neuroses and Their Relation to 

Development . . . , . .116 

V. Some Nervous Disturbances of Development 144 

VI. The Psychology of Learning , . . 169 

VII. The Racial Brain and Education . . 219 

Si VIII. Experimental Pedagogy 239 

IX. School- Mastering Education . . , 275 

X. Man's Educational Reconstruction of Nature 307 



MIND IN THE MAKING: A STUDY 
IN MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 



CHAPTER I 

STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 

Our New England forefathers seem to have been lav- 
ishly supplied with intuitions concerning the signs of the 
various virtues and to have delighted in exhibiting speci- 
mens before the young, both as objects of emulation and 
solemn examples. But it is impossible to help being 
amused by their naive exposure of the stage machinery, 
and one cannot but wonder whether the school-boys 
themselves did not smile, since even Puritan boys may 
have had a tinge of frivoli^, when they read in pictur- 
esque verse the maxims designed to kindle their zeal for 
learning/ We do not know how effective these amiable 
lures to perfection were, but probably the boy who is at 
chronic war with his book was quite as much of a 
problem then as now. Nothing to-day causes more or 
worse worries. Parents pine over his future, and 
teachers fall into despair in their perplexity about what 
to do with him. 

' " The boy that is good 
Does mind his book well; 
And if he can't read 
Will strive for to spell. 

" His school he does love; 

And when he is there 

For play and for toys 

No time can he spare." 

From the Youth's Instructor in the English Tongue, or the Art of Spelling 

Improved, quoted by Clifton Johnson in his Old-time Schools and School- 

Books, p. 61. 

3 



4 MIND IN THE MAKING 

It would seem as though, under the stress of this 
parental misery and pedagogic flurry, the "dull" boy 
would have been a subject studied to exhaustion; yet, 
quite inconsistently, while conceding failure to get re- 
sults, he it is about whom teachers speak with indis- 
putable assurance. The solution of the dullard favor- 
ably received by educators is his segregation from his 
seemingly more intelligent classmates, and this is the 
sum of wisdom in his behalf. The remedy is a lame 
one, since the standards for the classification of dull boys 
are, at present, so indefinite. 

Recent medical science has shown that dulness may 
be caused by a variety of pathological conditions far 
removed in their location from the immediate centre of 
intelligence, and it is the imperative duty of educators to 
locate these causes and, when possible, to remove them, 
instead of shirking the responsibility by grouping all 
backward children together. The source of some of 
the reflex irritations that derange cerebral processes and 
blunt mental acuity will be discussed later. There is, 
however, another class of "backwards" so clearly de- 
fined in the biographies of those whose subsequent 
careers revealed distinguishing ability that it is per- 
missible to ask why educational procedure has been so 
little influenced by knowledge of the seeming stupidity 
in school-days of these eminent men and women. The 
subject is certainly worth investigating, and it was in the 
hope of getting some new points of view that the child- 
hood days of the men and women referred to in this 
chapter were studied. 

Linnseus's gymnasium director would have made a 
cobbler of him, telling* his father that he was unfit for a 

* Famous Men of Science, by Sarah K. Bolton. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 5 

learned profession. Yet all this time the boy was lost 
in the undergrowth of thoughts which in their maturity 
were to revolutionize the science of botany. When he 
went up to the university, the director gave him this 
certificate: "Youth at school may be compared to 
shrubs in a garden, which will sometimes, though 
rarely, elude all the care of the gardener, but if trans- 
planted into a different soil may become fruitful trees. 
With this view, therefore, and no other, the bearer is 
sent to the university, where it is possible that he may 
meet with a climate propitious to his progress." And 
the director's only claim to fame is that he wrote this 
note. 

"During my whole life," says Charles Darwin in his 
autobiography, "I have been singularly incapable of 
mastering any language. . . . When I left the school I 
was for my age neither high nor low, and I believe that 
I was considered by all my masters and by my father as 
a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard 
in intellect. To my deep mortification my father once 
said to me, 'You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, 
and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself 
and all your family.' " ^ Dr. Butler, the head master, 
once rebuked him for wasting his time on such subjects 
as chemistry, but no one would have heard of the Doc- 
tor had not Darwin rescued him from the dark waters 
of oblivion by pulling him into his autobiography. 

Harriet Martineau's parents considered her mind dull 
and unobservant and unwieldy.^ Though a born mu- 
sician, "never known to sing out of tune," she could do 
nothing in the presence of her irritable master, Mr. 

' Life and Letters, pp. 29-30. 

2 Autobiography, edited by Maria Weston Chapman, 1877, Vol. I, p. 27. 



6 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Beckwith. " Now and then he complimented my ear," 
she tells us, " but he oftener told me that I had no more 
mind than the music-book, . . . and that it was no 
manner of use trying to teach me anything. All this 
time, if the room door happened to be open without my 
observing it when I was singing Handel by myself, my 
mother would be found dropping tears over her work, 
and I used myself, as I may now own, to feel fairly 
transported." ^ 

"I was the first of my family," she continues, "who 
failed in the matter of hand-writing; and why I did re- 
•nains unexplained. I am sure I tried hard; but I 
wrote a vulgar, cramped, untidy scrawl till I was past 
twenty; — till authorship made me forget manner in 
matter and gave freedom to my hand. ... It was a 
terrible penance to me to write letters home from Bris- 
tol, and the day of the week when it was to be done was 
very like the Beckwith music-lesson days. If anyone 
had told me then how many reams of paper I should 
cover in the course of my life, life would have seemed a 
sort of purgatory to me." ^ 

Miss Martineau speaks interestingly of a visit to some 
cousins when she was about sixteen years old. "I still 
think," she says, "that I never met with a family to 
compare with theirs for power of acquisition, or effective 
use of knowledge. They would learn a new language 
at odd minutes ; get through a tough philosophical book 
by taking turns in the court for air; write down an en- 
tire lecture or sermon, without missing a sentence; get 
round the piano after a concert, and play and sing every 
new piece that had been performed. Ability like this 

1 hoc. cit.. Vol. I, p. 42. 

2 Loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 69. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 7 

was a novel spectacle to me; and it gave me the pure 
pleasure of unmixed admiration; for I was certainly 
not conscious of any ability whatever at that time." ^ 
Yet these cousins are known to-day only from a page in 
the autobiography of the timid, backward girl, who sat 
unnoticed in the drawing-room shadows made gloomier 
by contrast with the brilliancy of their precocious minds. 

Napoleon Bonaparte does not seem to have distin- 
guished himself in any of his studies at the military 
school in Paris, unless, perhaps, in mathematics. In 
the final examination for graduation he stood forty- 
second in his class.^ Who were the forty-one above, 
him ? *' Neither he nor his sister Eliza, the two strong 
natures of the family, could ever spell any language 
with accuracy and ease, or speak and write with rhetori- 
cal elegance." ^ Napoleon's laxity in matters of mili- 
tary discipline after he joined the artillery is astonishing 
in view of his later success, and in 1789 he fully decided 
to withdraw from the service.* 

William H. Seward's teacher once reported to his 
father that he was too stupid to learn.^ Like his class- 
mates, Seward used to while away the tedium of Dr. 
Wayland's Homer recitations by reading novels, 

Patrick Henry "was too idle to gain any solid ad- 
vantage from the opportunities which were thrown in 
his way. He was passionately addicted to the sports 
of the field, and could not support the confinement and 
toil which education required. Hence, instead of sys- 
tem or any semblance of regularity in his studies, his 

> hoc. cit.. Vol. I, p. 71. 

2 Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by William M. Sloane, 1896, Vol. I, p. 33. 

3 Loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 36. 
< Loc. cit.. Vol. I, p. 48. 

6 Autobiography, 1877, p. 22. 



8 MIND IN THE MAKING 

efforts were always desultory, and became more and 
more rare until at length, when the hour of his school 
exercises arrived, Patrick was scarcely ever to be 
found." ^ Instead, he went fishing and hunting for 
days and weeks at a time. His biographer, Wirt, could 
not learn " that he gave in his youth any evidence of that 
precocity which sometimes distinguishes uncommon 
genius. His companions recollect no instance of pre- 
mature wit, no striking sentiment, no flash of fancy, no 
remarkable beauty or strength of expression; and no 
indication, however slight, either of that impassioned 
love of liberty, or of that adventurous daring and in- 
trepidity, which marked so strongly his future charac- 
ter. So far was he, indeed, from exhibiting any one 
prognostic of this greatness, that every omen foretold a 
life, at best of mediocrity, if not of insignificance. His 
person is represented as having been coarse, his man- 
ners uncommonly awkward, his dress slovenly, his con- 
versation very plain, his aversion to study invincible, 
and his faculties almost entirely benumbed by indo- 
lence. No persuasion could bring him either to read 
or to work. On the contrary, he ran wild in the forest, 
like one of the aborigines of the country, and divided 
his life between the dissipation and uproar of the chase 
and the languor of inaction." ^ 

Started in business as a merchant by his father, his 
indolence brought speedy failure. Married at eighteen 
without any means of support, his father and father-in- 
law came to his aid with a little farm, the work of which 
he so hated that relief soon came in failure. Another at- 
tempt at business, followed by bankruptcy, and he de- 

• Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, by William Wirt, 
1852. 

^ Ibid., Vol. I, p. 24. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 9 

termined, as a last hope, to try law. Yet neither he nor 
his friends seem to have had any confidence in his suc- 
cess. But the rest of his hfe is the country's history. 

Sir Isaac Newton has said of himself that at twelve 
he "was extremely inattentive to his studies and stood 
very low in the school." ^ At that time his position was 
last in the next to the lowest form. So little ability did 
he show that at fifteen he was taken out of school and 
set at work upon the farm. Later, in one of his uni- 
versity examinations in Euclid, he made so poor a 
showing as to be reproved by the examiner.^ In this 
instance, however, his failure seems to have been due to 
his unwillingness to be restricted by "approved" meth- 
ods of demonstration. 

John Dalton was not quick, intellectually.^ Indeed, 
there was nothing in his work to indicate any unusual 
ability. 

Samuel Johnson was indolent. "My master," he 
once said,^ "v/hipt me very hard. Without that, sir, I 
should have done nothing." 

"Swift's college course was entirely without brilliancy 
or promise; in his last term examination he failed in 
two out of the three subjects," ^ and he was refused his 
degree because of "dulness and insufficiency." He 
was finally allowed to take it only by "special favor." ® 

When a boy in school, Wordsworth ' made but little 



* David Brewster's Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Discoveries of Sir 
Isaac Newton, Vol. I, pp. 7 and 14. 

2 King's Biographical Sketch of Sir Isaac Newton, p. 21. 
5 John Dalton, by Sir Henry E. Roscoe, p. 17. 

* Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. I, p. 53. 

5 The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, with a Biographical Introduction, 
by W. E. H. Lecky, 1897, Vol. I. p. xiv. 

* Leslie Stephen's Jonathan Swift {English Men of Letters), p. 5. 

' William Wordsworth, the Story of his Life, by James Middleton Suth- 
erland, London, 1887. 



10 MIND IN THE MAKING 

progress, spending his time chiefly in reading Gulliver's 
Travels, Don Quixote, The Tale of a Tub, Fielding's 
Works, Gil Bias and other similar books. As late as 
seventeen years of age he was wholly incapable of con- 
tinued application to prescribed work/ His university 
career grievously disappointed his friends, and up to 
about twenty-five years of age he shifted aimlessly from 
one thing to another, causing his friends endless anx- 
iety because of his seeming inability to settle down to 
any regular work. "In truth he was a strange and 
wayward wight." ^ 

Wordsworth himself has left on record how little 
pleasure he found in the lecturer's room 

All studded round, as thick as chairs could stand, 
With loyal students faithful to their books, 
Half-and-half idlers, hardy recusants. 
And honest dunces.^ 

Called upon to choose his companions from among 
the indolent or industrious, he chose the former, and to- 
gether they talked 

Unprofitable talk at morning hours; 

Drifted about along the streets and walks, 

Read lazily in trivial books, went forth 

To gallop through the country in blind zeal 

Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast 

Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars 

Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought. 

It is decidedly significant, in view of Wordsworth's 
attitude toward his studies, that from the beginning to 
the end of his school career not one of his teachers made 
the slightest impression upon him. Whether this was 
altogether his fault is a very pertinent question. 

' Emile Legouis's The Early Life of William Wordsworth, p. 71. 

2 From Dorothy Wordsworth's Letter, quoted in Knight's Life of 
Wordsworth, Vol. I, p. 83. 

3 Prelude, Complete Poetical Works. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER U 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was indolent in school and 
ranked correspondingly low. Dr. Parr, his language 
teacher at Harrow, says that there was little in his boy- 
hood worth communicating; "he was inferior to many 
of his school fellows in the ordinary business of a school, 
and I do not remember any one instance in which he 
distinguished himself in Latin or Greek composition, 
either in prose or verse." . . . He was "not only slov- 
enly in construing, but unusually defective in his Greek 
grammar." ^ Dr. Parr's Greek and Latin prose was 
doubtless admirable, but he is known only ag the 
teacher under whom Sheridan could not succeed. To 
his teachers at Harrow he was remarkable in nothing 
but his idleness and winning manners. 

Robert Fulton ^ was a dullard because his mind was 
filled with thoughts about other things than his studies; 
but his teachers could not understand this, and so the 
birch rod became a frequent persuader. 

Alexander von Humboldt said of himself "that in the 
first years of his childhood his tutors were doubtful 
whether even ordinary powers of intelligence would 
ever be developed in him, and that it was only in later 
boyhood that he began to show any evidence of mental 
vigor." ^ "Until I reached the age of sixteen," he says,* 
"I showed little inclination for scientific pursuits. I 
was of a restless disposition, and wished to be a soldier. 
This choice was displeasing to my family, who were desir- 
ous that I should devote myself to the study of finance, 
so that I had no opportunity of attending a course 
of botany or chemistry; I am self-taught in almost all 

' Memoirs, by Thomas Moore, Vol. I, p. 12. 

2 The Life of Robert Fulton, by Thomas W. Knox, 1886. 

3 Karl Bruhns's Life of Alexander von Humboldt, Vol. I, p. 31. 

4 Ibid., p. 26. 



12 MIND IN THE MAKING 

the sciences with which I am now so occupied, and I 
acquired them comparatively late in hfe." At nineteen 
years of age he had never heard of botany. It was at 
this time that he made the acquaintance of a youth of 
his own age who had just pubhshed a Flora of Berlin. 
"His gentle and amiable character stimulated the in- 
terest I felt in his pursuits. ... I became passionately 
devoted to botany and took special interest in the study 
of cryptogamia." Meanwhile he seems not to have 
made much progress in Greek, since at this same age, 
nineteen, he wrote to his friend Wegener that he "was 
still struggling with prophets and otters in the first de- 
clension." The preface to a letter in Greek to his 
friend, written shortly after, runs, "I must freely confess 
that I fear you will not understand a syllable of all that 
I have written, and then I shall have to say with Sancho 
Panza: 'Your worship does not understand me? No 
matter. God, who knows all things, understands me.' " ' 
Heine made a poor showing at school. His mind was 
too keen and alert for him to excel in the imitative class 
work. The dates in Roman history were an unceasing 
annoyance, though, as he tells us, he afterward came to 
appreciate their value because he has since known peo- 
ple with "nothing in their heads but a date or two, by 
the help of which they have found the right houses in 
Berlin and become full professors;"^ but "reckoning 
was worse yet," while as to Greek, "the monks of the 
Middle Ages were not so far wrong when they declared 
that it was an invention of the devil. God knows what 
misery I suffered with it." He hated French metres and 
could not write their verses, so his teacher vowed he had 

> Ibid., p. 54. 

' Heine's Life, Told in His Own Words, New York. 1S93, p. 11. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 13 

no soul for poetry and called him a barbarian from the 
German woods. He idled away his time at Bonn and 
was "horribly bored" by the "odious, stiff, cut-and- 
dried tone" of Gottingen University. Nothing pleased 
him. The professors were more leathery than at Bonn, 
so he busied himself a good deal with students' duels. 
" It amuses me," he says, " for want of something better; 
and it is at least better than the wet rags of teachers, 
young and old, of our Georgia Augusta." 

The hatred of Joseph Banks, the English naturalist, 
for the monotony of school routine was so marked as to 
bring complaint from his teachers. Yet it was not dis- 
like for work; he simply could not travel the road by 
which alone the educational doctors would permit him 
to reach the golden gate. One day when he came out 
of the water in which he had been bathing, he found his 
companions gone and, after dressing, he walked slowly 
home along a meadow-path fringed on either side with 
fragrant flowers. Life had never shown such charms, 
and he exclaimed, "How beautiful! Would it not be 
far more reasonable to make me learn the nature of 
these plants than the Greek and Latin I am confined 
to?"^ 

In her early days George Eliot was not precocious. 
It was with some difficulty that she learned to read, 
though her brother Isaac, with pardonable pride, 
thought that this was because she enjoyed playing so 
much more than studying.^ "Hers was a large, slow- 
growing nature," said her husband, "and I think it is, 
at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant 
phenomenon about her." 

' The Works of Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux, Vol. I, p. 337. 
2 George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals, edited by 
J. W. Cross, Vol. I. p. 11. 



14 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Sir Walter Scott* never took very kindly to the school 
pabulum but, instead, read great quantities of poetry 
and fiction. " Though often negligent of my own task," 
he says, "I was always ready to assist my friends; and 
hence I had a little party of staunch partisans and ad- 
herents, stout of hand and heart, though somewhat dull 
of head — the very tools for raising a hero to eminence." ^ 
In reading of Scott's boyhood one is continually im- 
pressed by the evidence that he was always brilliant in 
his own way but mediocre when tested by school criteria. 

John Hunter, the celebrated anatomist and surgeon, 
is reported by one writer to have been unable to read or 
write at seventeen years of age, so great was his hatred 
for school; but he enjoyed keenly all out of door sports. 
He was called indolent and he himself tells why. "When 
I was a boy I wanted to know about the clouds and the 
grasses, and why the leaves changed color in the au- 
tumn; I watched the ants, bees, birds, tadpoles and 
caddis worms; I pestered people with questions about 
what nobody knew or cared anything."^ In his unap- 
preciated condition of learned ignorance he just missed 
becoming a cabinet-maker through the fortunate failure 
in business of his brother-in-law, in whose carpenter 
shop he was working. 

Charles Lyell states * that, when a boy, he had an ex- 
cessive aversion to work unless forced to it. 

A book, with colored plates, by Gesner, the Swiss nat- 
uralist, seems to have been the touchstone which united 
in Cuvier the disconnected powers of which he himself 

1 Sir Walter Scott, the Story of his Life, by R. Shelton Mackenzie. 

' Autobiography in J. G. Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, p. 26. 

' Two Great Scotsmen, the Brothers William and John Hunter, by George 
R. Mather, Glasgow, 1893, p. 120. 

* Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, edited by his sister-in- 
law, Mrs. Lyell, London, 1881. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 15 

was, at best, but dimly conscious, and made them active. 
The works of Buffon did the rest.^ 

HegeP never distinguished himself in the lower 
schools, and on leaving the university of Tiibingen his 
certificate stated that he was of middling industry and 
knowledge, but especially deficient in philosophy. 

Dr. Cardew, in whose school Sir Humphrey Davy 
was placed at fourteen years of age, says ^ that he did not 
at that time observe any extraordinary ability in young 
Davy nor any special talent for those scientific pursuits 
in which he afterward became so eminent.* He kept 
the good Mr. Tonkin in constant terror by explosions in 
the attic where he was playing with chemicals. "This 
boy Humphrey is incorrigible," cried the old gentleman 
one day; "was there ever so idle a dog?"^ At the 
grammar school he "had the reputation of being an 
idle boy, with a gift for making verses, but with no apti- 
tude for studies of a. graver sort." ^ Indeed, at no time 
during his boyhood does he seem to have given any in- 
dication of superior talent or unusual quickness.^ 

At the Aberdeen Grammar School, Byron reached the 
head of his class, "for it was the custom there to invert 
the proper order of the classes at the beginning of the 
lesson, so that the most ignorant were for the moment 
placed first; and more than once the master said,^ ban- 
tering him, 'Now, George, man, let me see how soon 
you'll be at the foot.' " At Trinity College, Cambridge, 

' Memoirs of Cuvier, by Mrs. R. Lee, New York. 
2 William Wallace, in Encyclopwdia Britannica. 

' Memoirs of the Life of Sir Hmnphrey Davy, by his Brotlier, John Davy, 
London, 1836, Vol. I, p. 20. 

< Humphrey Davy, by T. E. Thorpe, p. 12. 

* Kings of the Rod, Rifle and Gun, by Thormanby, 1901, VoL I, p. 300. 
6 Lac. cit., p. 299. 

' The Works of Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux, 1873, VoL I, p. 108. 

* The Life of Lord Byron, by Roden NoeL London, 1890, p. 33. 



16 MIND IN THE MAKING 

"he was never anything but a poor scholar, bestowing 
little care on the studies of the place." ^ 

It is interesting to learn that so clever a writer as 
Huxley "detested the trouble of writing, and would take 
no pains with it"^ till long past twenty years of age. 
"My regular school training," he testifies, "was of the 
briefest; perhaps fortunately, for though my way of life 
has made me acquainted with all sorts and conditions 
of men, from the highest to the lowest, I deliberately 
affirm that the society I fell into at school was the worst 
I have ever known. We boys were average lads, with 
much the same inherent capacity for good and evil as 
any others; but the people who were set over us cared 
about as much for our intellectual and moral welfare as 
if they were baby farmers." ' 

In the Military Academy of Duke Karl Eugene, 
Schiller, then a lad of sixteen, did not show any profi- 
ciency in philosophy, rhetoric, or law. Greek seems to 
have been the only study in which he excelled. In one 
of his school reports we find that "Schiller has abund- 
ance of good-will, and shows great desire to learn; his 
negligence and lack of alertness, however, call for re- 
peated reproof. He is sensible of his faults, and strives 
to correct them."^ Being behind in the studies in 
which he was registered, Schiller decided, shortly after 
this, to change his course and take up medicine. When 
the time for graduation came, his thesis on The Influ- 
ence of the Body upon the Mind was not satisfactory 
and he was not allowed to graduate that year. 



• Loc. cit., p. 54. 

* Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 22. 
' Loc. cit., p. 5. 

« The Life of Schiller, by Heinrich Duntzer, translated by Percy E. 
Pinkerton, London. 1883, pp. 41. 42, 45. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 17 

James Russell Lowell was reprimanded, at first pri- 
vately and then publicly, in his sophomore year, "for 
general negligence in themes, forensics and recitations."^ 
His relatives grieved at his " indolence, " and on the 25th 
day of June, 1838, the college faculty voted that he be 
suspended "on account of continued neglect of his col- 
lege duties." During this period of rustication he was 
required to review Locke's Essay on the Human Under- 
standing and study Mackintosh's Review of Ethical 
Philosophy with a tutor, reciting twice a day.^ 

Oliver Goldsmith's teacher, in his early childhood, 
thought him one of the dullest boys that she had ever 
tried to teach. She said that he was "impenetrably 
stupid"; she was afraid that nothing could be done 
with him.^ Later in his school course he made no un- 
usual progress and was considered careless and indo- 
lent. His indolence and dislike for his university tutor, 
who called him ignorant and stupid before his class- 
mates, combined to make him hate mathematics, sci- 
ence and philosophy. "A lad," he says, "whose pas- 
sions are not strong enough in youth to mislead him 
from that path of science which his tutors, and not his 
inclinations, have chalked out, by four or five years' 
perseverance will probably obtain every advantage and 
honor his college can bestow. I would compare the 
man whose youth has been thus passed in the tranquillity 
of dispassionate prudence, to liquors that never fer- 
ment, and, consequently, continue always muddy."* 

His family felt keenly his failure to take a prominent 

^ James Russell Lowell, a Biography, by Horace Elisha Scudder, 1901, 
Vol. I, p. 30. 

« Loc. ciL, Vol. I, p. 47. 

' Jrvlng's Life of Goldsmith, p. 19. 

* Ibid., p. 32. 



18 MIND IN THE MAKING 

place in the university. "The first opportunity my 
father had of finding his expectations disappointed," he 
writes, "was in the very middhng figure I made at the 
university: he had flattered himself that he should soon 
see me rising into the foremost rank in literary reputa- 
tion, but was mortified to find me utterly unnoticed and 
unknown. His disappointment might have been partly 
ascribed to his having overrated my talents and partly 
to my dislike of mathematical reasoning, at a time when 
my imagination and memory, yet unsatisfied, were 
more eager after new objects, than desirous of reason- 
ing upon those I knew. This, however, did not please 
my tutors, who observed, indeed, that I was a little dull, 
but at the same time allowed that I seemed to be very 
good natured, and had no harm in me." * 

Priestley's "whole education was exceedingly im- 
perfect, and excepting in Hebrew and in Greek he never 
afterwards improved it by any systematic course of 
study. . . . 'When I began my experiments,' he tells 
us, 'I knew very little of chemistry, and had, in a man- 
ner, no idea of the subject before I attended a course of 
lectures at an academy where I taught.' " ^ 

In the Nikolaischule at Leipzig, says Richard Wag- 
ner, "I was relegated to the 'third form' after having 
already attained to the 'second' in Dresden. This cir- 
cumstance embittered me so much, that thenceforward 
I lost all liking for philological study. I became lazy 
and slovenly."^ 

At Leipzig, Goethe rarely attended the lectures. 
"Nominally he was still a student of law, but actually 

' Letters from a Citizen of the World, Bohn's Library edition, p. 100. 

2 The Works of Henry Lord Brougham and Vaux, 1873, Vol. I, p. 70. 

3 Prose Works of Richard Wagner, translated by William Ashton Ellis, 
London, 1899, Vol. I, p. 5. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 19 

he devoted all his hours of study to the whole wide 
realm of fine arts and belles-lettres."^ The university 
professors to whom he showed his poems could see noth- 
ing of value in them, and " the poet was seized with rage 
and contempt for everything he had ever written in 
poetry and prose, and he mercilessly threw almost all 
the fine things which he had brought along from Frank- 
furt into the fire." ^ When the time for taking his doc- 
tor's degree arrived he failed because his thesis was 
unsatisfactory, and so he was obliged to be contented 
with a license. 

Henry Ward Beecher at ten years of age, according 
to his sister, Mrs. Stowe, "was a poor writer, a miser- 
able speller, with a thick utterance, and a bashful reti- 
cence which seemed like stolid stupidity. . . . He was 
not marked by the prophecies even of partial friends 
for any brilliant future. He had precisely the organi- 
zation which often passes for dullness in early boyhood. 
He had great deficiency in verbal memory — a deficiency 
marked in him through life. ... In forecasting his 
horoscope, had any one taken the trouble then to do it, 
the last success that ever would have been predicted 
for him would have been that of an orator. 'When 
Henry is sent to me with a message,' said a good aunt, 
*I always have to make him say it three times. The 
first time I have no manner of an idea more than if he 
spoke in Choctaw; the second, I catch a word now and 
then; by the third time I begin to understand.' . . . 
The other children memorized readily and were bril- 
liant reciters [of the catechism], but Henry, blushing, 
stammering, confused, and hopelessly miserable, stuck 

' Albert Bielschowsky's Life of Goethe, trans, by W. A. Cooper, Vol. I, 
p. 73, 

s Ibid., pp. 46-47. 



20 MIND IN THE MAKING 

fast on some sandbank of what is required or forbidden 
by this or that commandment, his mouth choking up 
with the long words which he hopelessly miscalled, was 
sure to be accused of idleness or inattention, and to be 
solemnly talked to, which made him look more stolid 
and miserable than ever, but appeared to have no effect 
in quickening his dormant faculties."* 

William Cullen Bryant's father, disgusted with the 
rhymes of his ten-year-old son, once said, "He will be 
ashamed of his verses when he grows up."^ 

Complaints of Emerson's scholarship in college 
reached the ear of the head master of the Latin school 
in which he had prepared. " He came to see me in my 
room once or twice," said Emerson, "to give me advice 
of my sins of deficiencies in mathematics in which I 
was then, as I am now, a hopeless dunce." ^ One of 
Emerson's classmates has left on record that Emerson 
knew less about the text-books than many of them, but 
far more concerning literature. 

Pasteur, as a boy, was not at all remarkable in schol- 
arship, and when he attended the College Communal at 
Arbois "he belonged merely to the category of good 
average pupils."^ "Books and study had little attrac- 
tion for him, and he preferred to follow his favorite 
pastime of fishing, and to delight his companions and 
neighbors by sketching their portraits, some dozen of 
which are still shown with pride by the inhabitants of 
Arbois."' 

' Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. by Wm. C. Beecher and Samuel 
Scoville, pp. 65 and 70. 

- A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, by Parke Godwin, Vol. I, p. 23. 

- A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by James E. Cabot, Vol. I, pp. 
54-55. 

* The Life of Pasteur, by Rene' Vallery-Radot, trans, by Mrs. R. L. 
Devonshire, Vol. 1, p. 9. 
•J Pasteur, by Percy Frankland, p. 10. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 21 

"I first remember Thackeray as a pretty, gentle boy 
at the Charterhouse," wrote one of his friends. "Though 
he staid there several years, he never rose high in the 
school, nor did he distinguish himself on the play- 
ground."^ 

Shelley's interest in poetry seems not to have been 
awakened until toward the close of his school life at 
Eton.2 

Daniel Webster "could learn anything if he tried. 
But with all this he never gained more than a smatter- 
ing of Greek and still less of mathematics." ^ 

John Adams developed very slowly. No one sus- 
pected his ability until he was well advanced in middle 
life." 

At Eton, Gladstone gave no evidence of unusual 
ability.^ 

In the Boston Latin School, Charles Sumner "seems 
to have been more remarkable for knowledge acquired 
by general reading than for striking ability."" His 
class standing was respectable, but that is about all that 
can be said for it. In college "he gave himself up to 
the studies that he loved." 

Salmon P. Chase "was only a moderate student and 
took no high rank in college." ^ 

At fifteen years of age Coleridge wanted to be a shoe- 
maker — and almost succeeded, and two or three years 
later he just escaped medicine,^ so little had his literary 
ability revealed itself to him or others. 

' Life of W. M. Thackeray, by Merivale and Marzials, p. 46. 
2 Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by William Sharp, p. 30. 
' Daniel Webster, by Henry Cabot Lodge, p. 16. 

* John Adams, by John T. Morse, Jr., p. 4. 

^ John Morley's Life of William E. Gladstone, Vol. I, p. 30. 

• Moorfield Storey's Charles Sumner, p. 5. 
' Albert B. Hart's Salmon P. Chase, p. 5. 

8 Life of Samnel Taylor Coleridge, by Hall Caine. p. 19. 



22 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Ferdinand Brunetiere, the late president of the 
French Academy, after having completed the course at 
the lycee Louis-le-Grand, failed in his examinations for 
admission to the Ecole Normale/ 

As a small boy Watt was the butt of his playmates 
who jeered at his dullness. In the commercial school 
which he attended he was neither punctual nor indus- 
trious.^ 

John Ledyard, given up by his family in America as 
a hopeless ne'er-do-well,^ shipping as a corporal of ma- 
rines with Cook on his third voyage round the world, a 
deserter from the British Navy during the war of the 
American Revolution, afterwards the friend of Robert 
Morris, Paul Jones and Jefferson, begged for a ship in 
which he might explore the Pacific coast from New 
Spain to Alaska, and in the hope of accomplishing his 
purpose he tramped more than twelve hundred miles in 
the mid-winter of northern Europe. "All that Lewis 
and Clark succeeded in doing for the West, backed by 
the prestige of government, Ledyard, the penniless sol- 
dier of fortune, had foreseen and planned with Jefferson 
in the attic apartments of Paris." ^ 

John Howard "was never able to speak or write his 
native language with grammatical correctness;"^ and 
this, too, after he had spent seven years in a grammar 
school and, in addition, had been "for a time under the 
care of a Mr. John Eames, a man of considerable repu- 
tation, and tutor in philosophy and languages at a dis- 
senting academy in London." 

' La Grande Encyclopedie; also Atlantic Monthly, April. 1907. 

2 The Life of James Watt, by James P. Muirhead, p. 17. 

3 A. C. Laiit's Vikings of the Pacific, p. 244. 
" Ibid., p. 262. 

' Edgar C. S. Gibson's John Houmrd, p. 4. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 23 

David Hume's mother, to whom Hume refers as "a 
woman of singular merit," has left on record her opinion 
of her illustrious son. "Our Davie's a fine good-nat- 
ured crater, but uncommon wakeminded." ^ Her mis- 
take was probably due to the same cause that so often 
leads to the misjudgment of children — inability to see 
that they are thinking about things outside of our field 
of vision. It is easy to understand how a "practical" 
woman, ^uch as Mrs. Hume seems to have been, should 
have doubted the quality of her son's speculative mind. 
At all events during his school training Hume "won no 
special distinction,"^ and perhaps this again was the 
result of his mental superiority, which forbade him to 
think in "approved" grooves. 

In speaking of his intellectual traits in boyhood, Her- 
bert Spencer says, "My memory was rather below par 
than above, in respect both of quickness and perma- 
nence. ... A related fact is that throughout boyhood, 
as in after life, I could not bear prolonged reading. . . . 
While, however, averse to lesson-learning and the 
acquisition of knowledge after the ordinary routine 
method, I was not slow in miscellaneous acquisition."^ 
Spencer's native antagonism to the rote method was so 
intense that it prevented him from making any sub- 
stantial progress, during his school course, in the gram- 
mar of his own or foreign languages. His mind was of 
the non-conforming sort, as indeed all superior minds 
are, and school organization has not yet been suffi- 
ciently perfected to take them into account. 

Two small boys were rivals for the last seat on the 
last bench in their school room. It was difficult to tell 

' Thomas Huxley's Life of Hume, p. 2. 

2 Henry Calderwood's David Hume, p. 14. 

' Herbert Spencer's Autobiography, Vol. I, pp. 91-92. 



24 MIND IN THE MAKING 

which was the poorer scholar, because they both stood 
so low and were running, most of the time, neck and 
neck. When, in after years, these two dunces met, one 
of them, Wilhelm Reuling, had become leader of 
the Imperial Opera' in Vienna, and the other, Justus 
von Liebig, a chemist of world-wide fame/ Liebig 
himself has told how the director of the gymnasium 
that he attended once visited his class and after observ- 
ing his wretched work, told him that he was the plague 
of his teacher and the sorrow of his parents, and asked 
him what he thought would become of one so inatten- 
tive and indolent.^ When young Liebig replied that 
he would become a chemist, the director and school 
burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Liebig's 
class-work continued so unsatisfactory that his father 
was obliged to remove him, and, in despair, appren- 
ticed him to an apothecary, but after ten months, as 
Liebig says, the pharmacist grew so tired of him that he 
sent him home. Liebig has suggested one reason for 
his poor success in school. He had scarcely any audi- 
tory memory, and could retain little or nothing of what 
he heard. Yet his teachers never found this out, and 
his boyhood was sacrificed to their ignorance. 

The diploma which Ilenrik Ibsen ^ received from the 
Christiania high school represented the lowest grades 
which would admit of graduation. Even in the Nor- 
wegian language his marks indicated only moderate 
standing. 

M. Pierre Curie,* late professor of physics in the Uni- 

' See Oration by Professor Augvist W. von Hofmann at the un^•eiling 
of Liebig's monument in 1890; Kiiiizel's Grossherzoglum Hcssen. 

* Deutsche Rundschau. Vol 66, p. 30. 

^Das Echo, June 26, 1907, p. 2119. (Quoted from the Berliner Neueste 
Nuchrichlen.) 

* The Westminster Gazette. April, 1906. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 25 

versity of Paris and co-discoverer, with his wife, of ra- 
dium, was so stupid in school that his parents removed 
him and placed him under a private tutor. 

These are a few of those whose subsequent careers 
demonstrated the inadequacy of the usual standards as 
tests of ability. The writer has others in his list, but it 
seems needless to continue the roll. 

The reader of these biographical notes certainly can- 
not fail to be impressed with the great diversity of 
causes underlying the superficial dullness. So far 
from being a simple condition of mental obtuseness, 
dullness, evidently, is an exceedingly complex state, 
varying widely in different persons. The biographical 
notes naturally include only those whose success has 
been sufficient to warrant chronicling. Assuredly 
there are others whose native endowment is so slight as 
to doom them to occupations requiring little intellect. 
To put with these latter those whose backwardness is 
a state of unawakened mental power, or occasioned by 
remediable pathological conditions, is only to habit- 
uate them to dullness. Clearly segregation en masse 
is bad educational policy. In each case the question 
is, what lies back of the seeming intellectual obtuseness. 
Is the cause physical, or mental, or developmental? 
Or, again, may it rest on unsatiated interest in things 
little thought of in our schools ? 

In some of the cases cited certain elements contribut- 
ing toward the situation are evident. Liebig's auditory 
memory was strikingly defective. Since much school 
instruction is given orally this defect alone would be 
sufficient to cause loss of interest, discouragement and 
inattention, with the accompanying superficial stupidity. 

A university professor recently told the writer that 



26 MIND IN THE MAKING 

when a boy his power of visualization was so strong that 
he could read a book through the night before his ex- 
amination, and the next day, as he wrote, he could see 
any page- in detail on his desk before him. His an- 
swers were thus alrriost copies of the text. At the end 
of three months of Euclid he received a mark of about 
five on a scale of one hundred. He then began to read 
it over the night before the examination, and at once 
brought his mark up to seventy because of his ability to 
visualize, though, as he himself says, he never had any 
mathematical ability. 

Another, a university student, when a boy, could vis- 
ualize the entire work of any arithmetical problem that 
had been put on the blackboard. 

It is needless to speak of the great disadvantage at 
which a motor-minded boy works with such classmates, 
especially when we remember that school work is car- 
ried on in such a manner as to distinctly favor the visual 
and auditory minded. It may be said that these cases 
are exceptions, but this is true only in the degree of their 
power. The important point is that children differ 
greatly in their way of getting and utilizing experience, 
and so dullness may express nothing more than the 
inability of children to immediately change their mode 
of reacting to the external world. 

A public school superintendent informs me that a 
seven-year-old boy had been in the first grade two years 
because, as his teacher said, he was too dull to go on. 
The superintendent placed him under another teacher, 
and at the end of the year he was leading his class. In 
the first school a phonetic method was used, and as the 
boy could not get auditory images he made no prog- 
ress. As soon as a visual method was employed he be- 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 27 

came bright. In the experiments made by the writer 
in the psychology of learning, and given in another 
chapter, it was continually evident that the visual, 
auditory, and motor-minded only imperfectly share in 
the experiences of one another, and in some instances 
such participation is absolutely impossible. It cannot 
be doubted that many times these mental differences 
are the basis of "dullness." 

In other instances, as shown by the biographical 
studies, dullness is the effect of absorbing interest in 
objects and phenomena beyond the range of current 
education. This is clearly seen in Darwin, Linnaeus, 
Fulton, Joseph Banks, John Hunter, Humphrey Davy 
and Watt. 

The teacher of one of the "dull" divisions in the 
Worcester (Mass.) public schools says that these chil- 
dren are the keenest to bring specimens and they know 
more about the life of animals and plants than her 
"best" division. They all seem to want to know how 
things are done, and they can always be relied upon to 
do anything requiring action. In another "dull" 
group several are greatly interested in animals. Three 
others like to work in electricity and one of these is ab- 
sorbed in it. He goes to the electric car barn to study 
the plant, crawls under the cars to examine the motor, 
and frequently runs the cars. 

The rigidity of our educational organization is a 
serious menace to mentation. Children must do cer- 
tain tasks at set periods, regardless of their native 
trends and momentary inclination, and so we lose the 
support of childhood's enthusiasm and put ourselves 
directly in opposition to it, with the friction of monotony. 
The paths of approach are so numerous that the sub- 



28 MIND IN THE MAKING 

jects of study might be reached from any point of indi- 
vidual preference, and in this way be made centres of 
educative forces for children of widely diverse interests, 
were not the system too stiff to bend to the needs of in- 
dividual dispositions. To make the native endow- 
ments of children the point of departure in their training, 
instead of always trying to strike fire at zero tempera- 
ture, and to have an organization so flexible that the 
moment of childish enthusiasm for an idea could be 
seized, regardless of what comes next in the programme, 
would be a long step in educational progress. It is 
more than regrettable that in schoolish zeal for the ac- 
complishment of set tasks the supreme value of selective 
discrimination for different natures has been denied. 
Many tasks were better not done by some children. To 
force them only engenders hatred for the subject, and 
the conservation of enthusiasm is vital for the symmetry 
of the psychic life. 

Then, again, the varying rates at which children 
mature make some seem stupid. George Eliot, Har- 
riet Martineau, John Adams and many others are 
known to have matured exceptionally slowly. But pre- 
cocious mental development is not always permanent. 
It is well known that aboriginal children learn quite as 
readily as children of European parentage, but it does 
not last. Mathews says that "for three consecutive 
years the aboriginal school at Remahyack, in Victoria, 
stood the highest of all the state schools of the colony in 
examination results, obtaining 100 per cent, of the 
marks, but the limit of the natives' range of mental de- 
velopment is soon reached."* The Andamanese, 

' Review in Nature, Vol. XLIII. 1890, p. 185, of Report in Journal, and 
Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Vol. XXIII, part 2. 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 29 

thought by some to be the Httle dwarfs whom Sinbad 
met in his fourth voyage, are certainly hideous Httle 
creatures. Man, who lived among them for some 
years, says that when he first arrived they did not know 
how to make fire and had no word for numbers above 
two, nor could they by any device count above ten. 
Yet, a little later, according to the same authority, these 
aboriginal children kept pace in the schools with chil- 
dren of European parents until they were ten or eleven 
years old, but at this age their mental development 
seems arrested,^ and Brander says that "up to twelve 
or fourteen they are as intelligent as any other chil- 
dren." ^ Rennie once declared, referring to the Maori 
children, that it was "rather an exceptional white boy 
who came up to their average."^ But they also, later 
in life, do not maintain this standard. Pilling* assures 
us that the children of the Cherokee Indians learn to 
read in two and one-half months, using a sort of sylla- 
bary invented by a half-breed Cherokee, "the son of a 
Dutch pedler and Cherokee mother, an illiterate vaga- 
bond," who, according to reports, could read neither his 
own nor any other language. Stetson ^ tested the mem- 
ory of five hundred colored and five hundred white 
children in the Washington public schools and obtained 
practically the same result from both groups. 

There seems to be a substratum of ability which, in 
its undeveloped state, does not differ greatly in children 
and is more fundamental than the special, accessory 

' The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, by Edward 
Horace Man, London, 1883, p. xxi. 

2 Quoted by De Quatrefages in Les Pygmees, Journal of the Anthropo- 
logical Institute, Vols. VII and IX. 

' Macmillan's Magazine, Vol. LXXIX, p. 40. 

< American Anthropologist, Vol. VI, p. 183. 

5 Psychological Review, Vol. IV, 1897, p. 285. 



30 MIND IN THE MAKING 

powers that rise from it. It is the racial mind persisting 
in the individual, and the 'expansion of this deeper men- 
tality, with its unquestionably varying individual possi- 
bilities, is the chief function of school during early child- 
hood. It is more tlian any talent because it is the 
matrix of them all, and well-rounded manhood, the 
proverbial "level head," depends on its symmetrical 
and unarrested growth. 

The power through which a potentially strong mind 
excels, and which is truest to its nature, rarely lies 
near the surface. The boy himself is usually not con- 
scious of it. Excellent mental endowment often differ- 
entiates slowly, but, as we have shown, there is every 
reason for believing that its expansion is very often un- 
naturally delayed by the narrowness of the enclosure 
within which the educational machine holds it. But, 
just as native indolence saves children from the per- 
nicious good intentions of their teachers, so the way- 
wardness of the mind, which makes it jump fences and 
seek new pastures, more alluring, perhaps, because the 
manner in which they shall be nibbled has not been 
settled by ancestral convention, comes to their aid and 
saves many from permanent arrest. 

The contention that it was, after all, being compelled 
to study the subjects in the course that made the men 
and women referred to in this paper successful, is 
hardly admissible, since, in most cases, they simply did 
not study them. According to the school standards 
they were negligent, indolent and dull, but theirs were 
too forceful natures to be satisfied with a narrow range. 
In their seeming indolence and mental instability they 
were testing themselves, not consciously it is true, but 
in response to vague organic promptings. It is likely 



STANDARDS OF HUMAN POWER 31 

to be the superficially precocious, whose mental en- 
dowment is not very selective, and so incapable of the 
loftier moods or greater intellectual achievements, who 
can adapt themselves without inward revolt to a pre- 
scribed and confined course. The others are restless in 
constraint. Their minds call for a greater variety and 
more freedom to do things in their own way. It is a sort 
of psychic ebullition, and each new bubble is a point of 
contact with the struggling mind below. This is the 
teacher's chance. He should help children to learn to 
know themselves, and the hottest place in the seething 
caldron is the point of greatest efficiency at that moment. 
Good boys, who easily fit into the school mould and 
always do just what their teachers desire, rarely seethe; 
they only sizzle. 

We have, then, accepted too readily the verdict of 
school studies. They require a certain specialized abil- 
ity, just as puzzles do, but it does not follow that those 
who cannot do them successfully are dull. The range 
of human experience and activity is not exhausted by 
the curricular stock of studies, and the number of men 
who have become eminent without initiation into their 
mysteries shows that their badge of membership is not 
necessary for success. Life cannot be interpreted in 
terms of English grammar, Latin or mathematics, in 
spite of those who insist that a boy must parse his way 
to salvation. 

All children are exceptional, and it is this varying 
personality that makes the life of the educator alike so 
fascinating, and so perplexing. It is quite certainly 
impossible in childhood, and probably in early youth, 
to determine who are the permanently bright, because 
at these ages special abilities of individual inheritance 



32 MIND IN THE MAKING 

have not differentiated. It is the period of racial in- 
heritance. For this reason every young child must be 
regarded as a possible genius. The function of the 
educator then, while elaborating to the fullest extent the 
basal racial characteristics, is to enter so completely into 
the lives in his charge that he may discover each new 
variation at its emergence. 

The problem of development is not simple and there 
is no "universal" method. The school-master has 
settled upon certain "essentials" for mental growth, or 
rather, they have come down to him from different 
periods since the Middle Ages, and he has fancied that 
their "necessity" is wrapped up in the nature of things, 
and so he uses up much energy in keeping children of 
widely varying endowments in the scholastic trail. 
Meanwhile the Patrick Henrys laugh at him in their 
indolence, the Wordsworths give thanks that he left 
them alone, and the John Hunters literally take to the 
woods. 



CHAPTER II 

CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS ; THEIR CAUSE 
AND FUNCTION 

One of the most interesting chapters in the history 
of education, as well as of ethics, is the evolution of 
the idea of sin. Cotton Mather,^ lovingly and fear- 
fully impressing her natural depravity upon his five- 
year-old daughter, is a curious picture of domestic 
pathos. That was certainly an oppressive moral 
burden which the hereditary sin of Adam put upon 
man. Fortunately for the peace of mind of parents, 
as well as of children, our interpretation of sin has 
greatly altered since the time when Calvin taught^ that 
the nature of children is odious and abominable to God, 
and Jonathan Edwards proclaimed them to be "young 
vipers, and infinitely more hateful than vipers to God." 

Investigation of the lives of reform-school boys 
always leaves the impression that, with possibly a few 
exceptions, they are quite representative of the average 
active, normal boy, and the investigator usually ends 
his work with the overwhelming conviction that, after 
all, probably the only reason why he and his boyhood 
associates did not graduate from the same sort of 
institution was the difference in their environment. It 

' Diary, quoted in Barrett Wendell's Cotton Mather. 
* Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. I, p. 229. 

33 



34 MIND IN THE MAKING 

was with this feeling, occasioned by conversation with 
the boys confined in the Wisconsin Reform School, and 
by a careful study of the "history book" of the institu- 
tion, that a questionnaire was prepared and sent to 
men of various occupations. 

Answers were received from forty-three teachers, in- 
cluding college and normal school professors, twenty- 
five college students and senior students of a state 
normal school, and thirty-five of a miscellaneous class, 
including lawyers, ministers, dentists, merchants, etc. 

The answers are not classified in percentages, as no 
such mathematical accuracy can be attributed to them. 
But conversation with many men since the completion 
of this investigation has strengthened the conviction 
formed at that time that they are a fair average of what 
the boyhood of many conscientious moral men has 
been. If the results err at all, it is not in exaggeration 
of criminal acts, but rather in the incompleteness of 
their enumeration. 

I, Larks and adventures play a large part in the life 
of most boys of an active and initiative nature, 
and there seems to be a keen enjoyment of feeling in- 
dependent of law. Of the forty-three teachers, thirty- 
three said that they enjoyed larks and adventures as 
boys, while four enjoyed them "if they were not too 
risky." Twenty-nine liked the excitement of doing 
what was forbidden, while twenty-six gloried in the 
thought of being outside the realm of law. The fol- 
lowing indicate the general tone of their replies: 

I am satisfied as I look back upon my boyhood that the only 
thing that kept me from going farther was fear of the law. I 
liked to be independent of it, and wanted to be, but usually I was 
afraid of it. 

If the law was liable to catch me I usually refrained. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 35 

About the same proportion of students and a rather 
larger proportion of the miscellaneous group gave 
similar answers. 

I probably would have enjoyed them had I had a chance. 
I was too sickly to engage in any, otherwise I should have 
enjoyed them. 

II. Truancy. Running away from home may begin 
as soon as the child is able to walk, and the impulse 
sometimes continues active in one form or another 
through childhood, or even into adult life. The desire 
to run away from home is not confined to boys in un- 
pleasant surroundings. In a class of twelve or fifteen 
boys, whose homes are all that could be desired, 
half a dozen or more will be found who planned 
more than once to run away. The writer has a 
distinct recollection of partially arranging to leave 
home several times. The exciting cause is commonly 
some book of adventure in which a boy plays a strik- 
ing part. 

This wandering tendency seems to be a survival of 
the migrations of primitive races. 

The migratory instinct of animals is too well known 
to need more than passing notice. This instinct prob- 
ably had its origin in the search for conditions suited 
to the animals' wants. The chief cause of migration 
has been the search for food.^ 

"The young salmon which is born in a mountain 
stream is soon impelled, by something in its nature, to 
journey downward, even for many hundred miles, until 
it reaches the unknown ocean, where it would discover, 
if it had faculties for anything so subjective as dis- 

> Wallace's Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. I, p. 25. 



36 MIND IN THE MAKING 

covery, that, while it was born in a little brook, it was 
made for life in the great ocean." * 

"The migratory instincts of the northern hares and 
squirrels, and more particularly of the Norway rat and 
lemming, which in severe winters move in amazing 
numbers in direct lines over lake, river, and mountain, 
overcoming all obstacles that might be placed in their 
path, are well known." ^ 

"The Kamchatka rats, under the pressure of num- 
bers, are stated by Pennant to travel westward for a 
distance of eight hundred miles or more." ^ 

"Turtles, during the ovipositing season, move in 
considerable numbers from one part of the sea to an- 
other, and they are stated to find their way annually to 
the Island of Ascension, which is distant upwards of 
eight hundred miles from the nearest continental land 

" 4 

mass. 

The impulse inherited from their animal ancestors, 
strengthened by the need for abundant food, has 
firmly implanted in the race the desire to roam. 

The home of primeval man in palaeolithic times 
"was along the shores of seas and the banks of streams. 
Up and down these natural highways he pursued his 
wanderings, until he had extended his roamings over 
most of the habitable land." ^ 

"What prompted him and all savage tribes is not 
always the search for food. The desire for a more 
genial climate, the pressure of foes, and often mere 
causeless restlessness, act as motive forces in the move- 



> W. K. Brooks: Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LII, p. 784. 

» Heilprin: Distribution of Animals, p. 40. 

' Ibid., p. 40. 

* Ibid., p. 41. 

' Brinton: Races and Peoples, p. 74. 



CKIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 37 

ments of an unstable population. Certain peoples, as 
the gypsies, seem endowed with an hereditary instinct 
for vagabondage. The nomadic hordes of the Asiatic 
steppes and the wastes of the Sahara transmit a rest- 
lessness to their descendants which in itself is an ob- 
stacle to a sedentary life." ^ 

During early geological periods, a strip of land con- 
nected France with England, and here, in his wander- 
ings, man probably crossed over from the continent.^ 

Tramps and gypsies furnish examples of the per- 
sistence of this slowly disappearing race tendency to 
migrate. Many men become tramps because the im- 
pulse in them to wander is so strong that they cannot 
resist it. 

Truancy is not evidence of youthful depravity. It 
is temporary reversion to the migratory habits of our 
ancestors. It is the awakening in the boy of the 
natural life of the race, and a revolt against the op- 
pressive gloom of the schoolroom. 

The following replies are from teachers: 

Yes, I ran away from school as often as I dared until thirteen 
years of age. 

No, but solely because I had more fun in school than out. 
Yes, I never got over it in the schools. 

III. Anger and Fighting. Anger probably arose as 
a substitute for reflex responses of the organism to pain. 
Hence it is one of the oldest elements in our psychical 
life. This accounts for its overwhelming force. Anger 
is physical,^ not only in its primitive form, but also in 
its more complex manifestations. It is not caused by 
organic changes, but is the feeling of these changes. 

1 Ibid., p. 75. 

2 Ibid., p. 376. 

3 Lange's Les Emotions. 



38 MIND IN THE MAKING 

In anger, as in every emotion, "there is an initial fact, 
idea, image or sensation, but the emotion itself is 
nothing but a sense of those organic changes which 
precede and condition it." ^ Its control is dependent 
upon inhibiting nervous impulses. These inhibiting 
impulses may be reflexes of a low order, as when you 
immediately allay the anger of a fierce dog by giving 
him a piece of meat, or they may be of a higher kind 
resulting from ideas of retribution reacting on the in- 
dividual, or, again, they may be of a still higher sort 
due to ideas of duty and responsibility. For this 
reason the conditions amid which a child is reared will 
have a strongly determining influence upon his control 
of himself. Among savages anger was allowed free 
vent. It was the means by which they "worked them- 
selves up" for war. Doubtless it also served a useful 
purpose in making the timid courageous. 

The justification for fighting among boys is not the 
need for self-protection, though it could be defended 
also on that ground. Its value, however, is psychical. 
Fighting, in some form, is one of the first means by 
which the mind becomes accustomed to intense action. 
To fight well, a boy must be capable of severe con- 
centration of attention. He learns to judge accurately 
and quickly. "To do things quickly and well is more 
than to do them quickly or well." ^ Fighting develops 
self-control, as one never defends himself successfully 
in angry excitement. 

It is a law of organic growth that tissue adapts itself 
to the tension to which it is put, provided, always, that 
the strain never increases suddenly beyond the strength 

' G. Stanley Hall: American Journal of Psychology, Vol. X, p. 589. 
« Baldwin's Social and Ethical Interpretations, p. 143. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 39 

of the resisting tissue. Bone "is composed of numer- 
ous fine bony plates so arranged as to withstand the 
greatest amount of tension and pressure, and to give 
the utmost firmness with a minimum expenditure of 
material."^ "If it is broken and heals out of the 
straight, the plates of the spongy tissue become re- 
arranged so as to lie in the new direction of greatest 
tension and pressure; thus they can adapt themselves 
to changed circumstances." This adaptation to strain 
is true also of muscular tissue, and probably of brain 
tissue. Rearrangement and development of brain sub- 
stance in adaptation to psychical tension is the under- 
lying principle of brain training. This is the physio- 
logical basis for the fact that the mind grows to the mode 
in which it is habitually exercised.^ 

Twenty-eight of the forty-three teachers had strong 
tempers, and twenty-two of these said that they were 
unable to control them. One answered, "usually, but 
when it got away from me I was wild. I tried to kill 
my brother once for tormenting me." 

Another said, "I once killed a cow in a fit of anger." 

"I was wild when angry," replied still another. 

A college professor wrote, "I remember trying to 
kill my brother once by hitting him with a stone after 
he had tormented me." 

Eighteen of the twenty-five students had strong tem- 
pers, and nine were unable to control them. Of the 
miscellaneous group there were twenty-seven out of 
thirty-three with strong tempers, and fourteen of these 
could not restrain themselves. 

' August Weismann: The Effect of External Influences upon Develop- 
ment, p. 11. 

2 Carpenter's Mental Physiology, p. 470, and Swift, Journal of Pedagogy, 
Feb., 1900. 



40 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Eight teachers, three students, and five of the mis- 
cellaneous group remember seriously injuring a com- 
panion while angry. The following are representative. 

I assaulted and nearly killed a boy who had snowballed me. 
I injured my sister quite seriously. 

I broke a boy's nose, dislocated his jaw, and nearly put out 
one of his eyes. 

IV. Robbing orchards, vineyards, and stealing water- 
melons is almost universal with those who have any 
opportunity. 

Only three teachers, two students, and six of the mis- 
cellaneous, answered, " No," and a number of these said 
that they had no chance. 

Yes, I took great pleasure in it (teacher). 

An interesting phase of these acts is the thought of 
vengeance which sometimes prompted them. It is the 
raiding spirit of primitive people. 

I assisted in robbing the orchards and vineyards of the farmers 
of a neighboring town with which our town was at variance. Two 
or three boys, well mounted, would take a small quantity of ap- 
ples, almost under the eyes of the farmers, and gallop away before 
the farmer could get after us. We did it to anger the people and 
spite the town, and not for the sake of the fruit, which we threw 
away along the road (teacher). 

Most of those who engaged in such acts looked upon 
them as legitimate fun. Only eight teachers out of 
forty-three, six students out of twenty-five, and five of 
the thirty-five miscellaneous considered it wrong at the 
age when they were doing such things. Besides those 
who gave an explicit answer of either " legitimate fun" 
or "wrong," the following typical reply is suggestive: 

The question of right or wrong did not come into my mind. I 
simply did it (teacher). 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 41 

The following illustrates the youthful idea of punish- 
ing stinginess and righting a felt injustice: 

I did it because I thought it fun to see the owner get angry. He 
had melons to feed to his hogs, but would not give us boys any, 
80 we helped ourselves (teacher). 

Children draw fine distinctions between wrong acts, 
and so justify themselves in doing something that is 
not very wrong, though they may admit that it is not 
quite right. 

I distinguished between taking money, real stealing, and taking 
fruit (teacher). 

I only partially regarded it as stealing (teacher). 

I did not consider that I was injuring any one to any great 
extent, and I was bringing enjoyment to myself (teacher). 

I considered it wrong, but I reasoned that it was not very wrong. 
I wanted the fruit, and took it because I wanted it, rather than 
for the excitement. I thought it not so bad as taking other things 
(teacher). 

I regarded it as wrong, but not wicked (college student). 

I thought it belonged to me if I could get it without being 
caught (miscellaneous). 

V. Taking things secretly from parents, brother, or 
sister seems to be quite common, the feeling apparently 
prevailing that appropriating property of members of 
the family is not quite so bad as taking it from others. 
Besides, if caught, so severe a penalty will not be 
inflicted. 

Yes, I took cigars. I did not smoke them, but traded them for 
things I wanted (teacher). 

Yes, too numerous to mention (miscellaneous). 

I took anything I wanted (miscellaneous). 

I stole a ring from my sister and gave it to another girl. I 
did not admit it for three or four years (miscellaneous). 

A special phase of this which probably prevails to 
quite an extent is illustrated by the following: 

Taking things from my brothers I viewed in the light of war- 



42 MIND IN THE MAKING 

fare, and I felt that it was getting ahead of them. I did not feel 
that their ownership amounted to much, or that there was any 
particular wrong in disregarding it (teacher). 

VI. Other escapades, of too varied a character for 
classification, include such acts as interfering with 
trains by flagging, greasing the rails, obstructing the 
track, throwing stones through the car windows, steal- 
ing old iron or coal, etc. Here, as throughout this 
chapter, the acts were committed in early boyhood, 
and up to about fifteen or sixteen years. 

I got drunk, stole things from a store, and carried a pistol and 
fired it (teacher). 

In company with another boy I stole some oranges from the 
stand in front of a store (teacher). 

I threw a cord of wood into a cistern used by a family (teacher). 

I once stole a book, that irresistibly attracted me, from people 
whom my parents were visiting. The theft was never discov- 
ered (teacher). 

I took various articles from stores (teacher). 

I once stole a thimble from a pedler, and, at another time, some 
fruit from a store. The last troubled me so much that the next 
day I bought some fruit there and, unseen, laid the money on the 
counter for what I had stolen the day before (teacher). 

I stole from news-stands (teacher). 

I stole railroad iron and explored other people's back yards 
to see what I could find to take (student). 

I took a wheel from a man's buggy (merchant). 

I turned in fire alarms (dentist). 

I obstructed highways and railroads (locomotive engineer). 

About twenty of us created a disturbance for which we were 
arrested (teacher). 

I stole mill files (merchant). 

I stole fruit and nuts from a fruit stand (teacher). • 

We boys often went out on what we called "cooning expedi- 
tions," stealing things lying around (teacher). 

I stole fruit, marked a house all over with red paint, tore 
up sidewalks, and threw tin pails filled with stones at houses 
(teacher). 

I stole two barrels of tar for a fire from a tar manufacturer, and 
I used to throw stones from a hill down upon some Italian work- 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 43 

men. I might have killed some of the men, as I did not select the 
smallest stones. We boys used to turn the street-car switches so 
as to send the car up the wrong track (teacher). 

I stole things from a locked house in which they were stored 
(teacher). 

One Sunday evening, in company with other boys, I stole a 
railroad hand-car and ran it off down the track (teacher). 

I stole some iron wheels from a farmer's machine (teacher). 

I uncoupled cars standing on side-tracks when they were being 
switched upon other tracks. Then I hid to watch and hear the 
brakemen swear when they found the cars left behind. I also 
threw over wood piles, tore down fences, and greased the railroad 
track to stop the train (teacher). 

I set fire to my uncle's barn to see it burn. With the help of 
other boys I put the carriage of a teacher upon the roof of his 
barn (teacher). 

I set fires in woods to see them spread (teacher). 

I pulled a farmer's wagon a long distance away, and set the 
brakes on a through freight train so that I could get off (teacher). 

I stole a man's horse and buggy, and was gone four days before 
he got track of me. With other boys I ran off with a hand-car, 
and when we heard, in a neighboring town, that the company's 
agents were after us, we left the car and ran away (teacher). 

I turned in false fire alarms for fun and placed large rocks on 
the street-car track (student). 

I shot through the windows of empty houses with a revolver 
(student). 

When eight or nine years old, I was taken into a beautiful park 
in Chicago, and, while unnoticed, I stamped my foot into the midst 
of a beautiful flower bed (teacher). 

I sold eggs and kept a part of the money with which my par- 
ents expected me to buy groceries. This was frequent up to my 
fifteenth year (student). 

I stole chickens, rabbits, fruit and cigars (student). 

I burned buildings, stole fruit from stores, and often greased 
railroad rails (barber). 

I pushed an outhouse over a bank upon a flat car below, and then 
started the car down the grade. I also put a railroad spike upon 
the track on a heavy grade for a flat car loaded with men to bump 
over as it shot down the grade (merchant). 

I broke into our schoolhouse through the window, and tore up 
and carried away some books and pictures. At about fourteen 
years of age I hired a boat, intending to go to Milwaukee. 
When about six miles away I left it and went off on foot. I do 



44 MIND IN THE MAKING 

not know whether the owner ever recovered the boat or not 
(lawyer). 

As a college student I stole a very valuable pair of elk horns 
from a front hall. I also blew up with powder an unused gas 
tank belonging to the city gas company (manufacturer). 

I stole powder from a quarry and took a hand-car many times 
from the roundhouse, and after using it I left it on the track any- 
where (merchant). 

I broke into a house while the occupants were at church and 
stole a lot of things to eat (farmer). 

I cut off a horse's mane and tail and painted him. At another 
time I pushed a fine carriage into a ravine and smashed it (dentist). 

I switched a train from the track and set fire to beds to get re- 
moved from one school to another (searcher of records). 

In company with other boys I greased the rails to see the train 
stop. Several of the boys were afterward sent to the reform 
school (teacher). 

Several of us boys stole old iron from the scrap-pile of a 
tin shop and sold it at a foundry. We did not do this so much for 
the money as to see if we could do it without being detected 
(teacher). 

I drank and gambled as a boy. On numerous occasions I 
tipped over small houses having blocks for a foundation. A 
family was living in one of them at the time. I was arrested sev- 
eral times (lawyer). 

I was one of a crowd of boys who put obstructions on the rail- 
road (locomotive engineer). 

I stole rags and sold them again. On one occasion I sold the 
same lot of rags three times. I also stole copper bottoms from 
boilers in yards, where they were placed to dry, and sold them. 
At one time I struck a policeman, who was about to arrest me, on 
the head with a mattock, and nearly killed him (merchant). 

In company with others I stole lead pipes from new buildings. 
We cut the lead and melted it. Detectives were employed, and 
so we quit. I frequently stole rabbits and pigeons (merchant). 

I forged my mother's name to a note asking for samples of 
cloths and prices, and presented it at the store when most of the 
clerks had gone to dinner. The object was to occupy the clerk's 
attention, while a friend, who has since served a term in the peni- 
tentiary, stole things from the store. Some of us boys broke into 
a store at night and stole bottles of pop. We afterward took back 
the bottles and received pay for them as empty pop bottles 
(skilled machinist). 

I stole turkeys from farmers (teacher). 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 45 

I stole fruit and nuts from fruit stands (teacher). 

I stole coal and iron from the railroad, and tried once to pass a 
counterfeit five-dollar bill. I knew it was counterfeit (teacher). 

I smashed signs and did general damage. I was seldom or 
never the one who did the deed, but I was one of the gang (teacher) . 

I dropped a stone down a mining pump causing a smash-up 
and assisted two other boys in breaking a flood gate (student). 

I greased rails to stop a train and set fire to dry grass in a 
pasture, and it burned over nearly the whole pasture. I also stole 
candy from a store (student). 

In the region in which I lived as a boy, nuts were held to be as 
strictly private property as fruit, and I made a practice of stealing 
them. In some cases I sold them at a store for several dollars. 
I felt that this was legitimate poaching, not even so bad as stealing 
fruit, in which I nevertheless engaged. In taking nuts the fun 
was a fully equal motive with the gain (teacher). 

In company with another boy I once tied a handkerchief to a 
stick, propped it up on the railroad track, and stopped a freight 
train. It was exciting sport, which we enjoyed keenly because 
we imagined it was such a daring infraction of law (teacher). 

I used to steal iron from a pile at a hardware store and sell it. 
I would then steal it from those to whom I had just sold it, and sell 
it at the hardware store from which I first stole it (teacher). 

I stole old iron from the railroad track, but I did not dare sell 
it, because I had it from tradition among the boys that the buyer 
would expose me (teacher). 

There is a decided feeling among boys that what 
they find, or overchange given them by mistake, be- 
longs to them. 

I did not return a $2^ gold piece that was given me by mistake 
for a ten-cent piece. I knew what it was when it was given to 
me (teacher). 

Yes, I have found articles of value, and I always considered 
such things the finder's property (teacher). 

I would not have tried to find the owner had I found any- 
thing (student). 

I found money in a pocketbook. I did not try to find the 
owner (lawyer). 

I once found $5. I thought I knew to whom it belonged, but I 
felt that he could afford to lose it, and I considered it a kind of 
godsend (searcher of records). 



46 MIND IN THE MAKING 

I found a $5 bill for which I did not seek the owner (merchant). 
I picked up a gold sleeve button of quite a little value, and a 
woman's breastpin. I laid them away (teacher). 

About one-half of the several groups admit that they 
drank intoxicating liquors while boys. The question, 
" Were you ever drunk while a boy ? " was conspicuously 
unanswered. Seven teachers, four students, and fifteen 
of the miscellaneous group said that they were. 

I enjoyed the excitement, and thought it manly (teacher). 

VII. The most serious offence with which the ques- 
tionnaire dealt was stealing money. The subject was 
divided into two parts, taking money from parents and 
from employers. 

About one-fourth of the teachers said that taking 
money from their parents was a more or less common 
occurrence. One-half of the students and about two- 
thirds of the miscellaneous group made the same ad- 
mission. A good number had no chance, but are sure 
that they would not have hesitated had opportunity 
offered. 

A university professor wrote in reply: 

I do not remember ever taking money from any person. I 
cannot now account for my scruples on that score, but I suspect 
that I saw some boys very severely punished once for taking 
money, and I unconsciously came to the conclusion that it was 
not a safe thing to steal. I know that I would not have hesi- 
tated to take anything which I wanted from my brothers or any 
one else, when I was seven or eight years old, if I felt reasonably 
sure that I should not be detected, but I was afraid to take money. 

I stole money in small amounts, usually fifty cents at a time, 
from the cash drawer of my father's store whenever I wanted it 
(teacher). 

I used to keep part of the change when I was given money to 
buy things for the family. I saved up twelve dollars in this way 
to redeem a pledge for the payment of a bill about which my par- 
ents knew nothing (student). 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 47 

I took money whenever chance offered (student). 

Once I took as much as five dollars (teacher). 

I took as much money as I thought would not be missed, usu- 
ally fifty cents or a dollar. Once or twice I took larger sums, 
according to what I wanted to get with it (merchant). 

I took money in small amounts whenever I needed ammunition 
for my gun (student). 

Almost all agreed that they divided stealing into de- 
grees of wickedness. Few regarded taking money from 
their parents as very bad. The following are from 
teachers : 

I did not think it exactly stealing. 

I looked upon taking money from my parents as different from 
taking it from others. 

I did not consider it stealing. 

I knew it was stealing, and I would not have dared meet my 
parent's sorrow had they learned of it. Still I kept it up. As I 
look back over such acts I am certain that I never really faced the 
question of right or wrong. I simply did it. 

From one-fifth to one-fourth of the several groups 
acknowledge taking money or articles of value from 
employers. When it is remembered that not all of 
those who were questioned had worked for others than 
their parents, this proportion becomes a large one. 

The growing feeling of part ownership is illustrated 
by the following from a college professor: 

As I now look back upon a period of twelve years' service, from 
nine years of age to twenty-one, I see how the feeling that I was 
part owner in everything steadily grew, and I would then make 
use of various small things without much thought about it; but 
still I kept the fact secret. Such things never amounted in value 
to over twenty-five cents at one time, and it was never money or 
clothing. 

When a close-fisted employer refused to let me have my clothes 
at cost, I pocketed enough of his change to bring my clothes down 
to the cost mark (student). 



48 MIND IN THE MAKING 

The following is from one who has lately entered the 
ministry, but who, at the time referred to, was a clerk 
in a drug-store: 

I appropriated to my own use, without paying for them, toilet 
articles and other things. 

The efforts of boys to satisfy their conscience and still 
enjoy the pleasures of an act in which they half feel they 
should not engage, is shown in the following from a 
teacher : 

When a boy I worked in a candy store, and I consumed a good 
deal of candy without letting the proprietors know that I did it. 
I reasoned that it was expected that a clerk would eat about a cer- 
tain quantity, and that it could not be wrong under these circum- 
stances. My point of conscience was how to gauge this cus- 
tomary amount, and I think I fixed it at about all the candy 
that I wanted. 

The amounts of money taken were usually small, but 
in one case as much as ten and twenty dollars were 
taken at a time. 

It is not uncommon for some children who would not 
themselves steal to be willing, nevertheless, to reap ad- 
vantage from the thefts of associates. 

Indirectly I encouraged others to steal. I obtained things 
which a boy of my own age wanted, and traded and sold them to 
him. He gave me money for some, and articles out of his father's 
store for others. I did not know positively that he took these 
things without his father's knowledge, but I had good reason to 
suppose that he did. I never inquired into the question. If I 
had known that he stole them I should have continued trading 
(teacher). 

The reasoning varied by which those who took money 
or articles of value from an employer justified them- 
selves, but frequently there seemed to be an attempt to 
satisfy their conscience. Sometimes a sense of in- 
justice, real or imagined, suggested the theft. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 49 

I was led to take money, etc., by telling myself that my em- 
ployer was not paying me enough, that he had no right to make 
money on the few things that I wanted for my own person, and 
by remembering that he himself had taught me to deceive his 
customers (student). 

I thought that I was not receiving enough pay for my work 
(teacher). 

I took things from the store in which I worked because I 
thought that I had earned them (teacher). 

I thought that if my employer would pay me more I could 
afford to buy the paper and other things that I took (printer). 

At other times the thought of justification did not 
enter the boy's mind. He did not face the question of 
right or wrong. He simply appropriated the articles 
or money. 

I did not try to justify myself. I wanted the things and I took 
them, though sometimes I took things which I could not possibly 
use (merchant). 

I just took the money because I wanted it. I did not face the 
question "ought I?" (teacher). 

Again, the morality of the act depended on the 
amount of money or value of the things taken. 

I felt that it was so small that it would not amount to much 
(teacher). 

I thought it would make no difference to the owner (teacher). 

I stole candy on the ground that the owner was to feed me, 
and it was as cheap as anything else (teacher). 

Vin. The great majority of those who expressed an 
opinion concerning the best way of dealing with lawless 
acts of boyhood believed that reasoning is most effective. 
Their own treatment as boys varied from reasoning to 
extreme severity. 

Father punished me severely. I do not think it had a good 
effect (teacher). 

Whipping I regarded as an outrage, and it made me insuffer- 
ably rebellious (teacher). 



50 MIND IN THE MAKING 

My father was gloomy and severe when I committed acts that 
were in any degree pubhc infringements. I consider reasoning 
better than punishment, but still better giving a boy such plays 
and active pursuits as will occupy his energy pleasantly (teacher). 

My father was very harsh when I had done anything wrong. 
He told me how wicked I was and what a terrible place I would 
go to when I should die if I did such things. His method now 
seems to me to have been the result of a strict belief in original 
sin which must be whipped out or else driven out by horrible re- 
morse. There was never any recognition of the fact that boys 
like excitement and do many things because they are normal 
boys. In his view every wrong that I did was done because I 
was wicked, not because I was a healthy growing boy. His 
method was decidedly bad (teacher). 

IX. Saying what was not true to escape punishment 
was common. Sometimes parents unintentionally drive 
a boy into falsehood. 

I was a persistent liar. My lying seems to me now to have 
been almost reflex, an immediate reaction to the stern questions 
of my father. He constantly frightened me into lying so that I 
finally came to tell falsehoods when there was no need for such 
protection (teacher). 

A professor in an eastern college writes: 

I, and my playmates generally, had no regard for the truth 
when an untruth was likely to save us from punishment. 

Few of those who replied have any regret for the un- 
lawful acts of boyhood. They seem to think them a 
necessary element in good physical and mental develop- 
ment. The following replies are typical. 

They were wrong, but I should feel half sorry if I thought my 
boy could not do the same things (teacher). 

They are natural things for boys to do (teacher). 

Such acts are simply the expression of a general egoistic atti- 
tude toward other people (teacher). 

I think all boys must have a few experiences of that sort 
(teacher). 

Such deeds are an outlet for surplus energy (teacher). 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 51 

These unlawful acts are those which any boy of spirit and en- 
ergy may do without their having any bad effect on the final 
formation of his character (teacher). 

I look back upon my acts with some surprise that they were 
not worse (teacher). 

They were an outlet for boyish activity, and if another outlet 
had been found they might not have happened (teacher). 

My wonder is that I did not do more. I think they were the 
natural outburst of boyhood, and did not represent vicious ten-- 
dencies. If there had not been the restraint and influence of a 
good home about me, I can easily see that I might have gone 
much farther (teacher). 

Harmless experiences which are often beneficial (student). 

Something that every boy of spirit must go through (student). 

I think I missed a valuable part of my life in not doing more 
(student). 

As the natural result of undue parental severity (lawyer). 

I believe that they were incited by a desire for excitement that 
was given no satisfaction of a legitimate sort (printer). 

They were caused by a love for adventure (student). 

Nearly all expressed the opinion that they would have 
continued to do such unlawful acts had their surround- 
ings and home influences been less favorable. 

I am perfectly sure that if it had not been for the kind re- 
straint of my surroundings I should have done much worse 
things than I did. I was under constant pressure to do the right 
thing, and I do not see how the majority of boys without such 
constant help and pressure from some source can fail to go wrong 
and stay wrong (teacher). 

It is certain that environment to a large extent determines the 
actions of children, and even of adults. The savage does not 
regard cannibalism as wrong. Had I been brought up under the 
conditions to which savages are subjected I would probably have 
been a cannibal also. So, doubtless, with the lawful and unlaw- 
ful acts of childhood. I acted in accord with my ideas of right 
and wrong, learned, without doubt, from others about me 
(teacher). 

The following is from a university professor: 

If my surroundings and influences had been different I think I 
might easily have become a criminal. I should have enjoyed 



52 MIND IN THE MAKING 

making counterfeit money or planning swindling operations 
against banks. 

It was my surrounding influences and the feeling that if I 
went too far I should disgrace my family that kept me from be- 
coming a criminal. I enjoyed everything of a criminal nature, 
but family pride saved me (teacher). 

Boy nature is curiously persistent. Pretty nearly 
everything that our grandfathers tell us seems very 
unlike what we see to-day, but whenever we get inside 
information about the escapades of boys of earlier days 
they have a wondrously familiar sound. 

Byron could not work his school exercises, and one of 
his schoolmates who excelled him in studies could not 
fight, so they entered into partnership, Byron fighting 
the battles of his friend in return for help in working 
his school exercises. "He was pacific and I savage," 
said Byron, "so I fought for him, thrashed others for 
him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others." ^ 

Henry Ward Beecher once stole a six-pound cannon- 
ball from the Boston navy yard. It was a difficult thing 
to take away undetected, but Henry was equal to the 
emergency. Wrapping it in his handkerchief he placed 
it on his head under his cap, and so succeeded in pass- 
ing the watchful sentinel. The cannon-ball was useless 
to him, and he gave it away, glad, as he says, to have 
it out of his sight.^ Perhaps the suspicious glances 
that everyone he met seemed to cast at him, and the 
perspiration which hung in big drops from his face when 
an officer came toward him as he was passing out, were 
the best moral teachers he could have had. Even as 
early as eight years of age, Henry could not resist the 
longing to pull the rope of the church bell. Church 

' Roden Noel's Life of Lord Byron, p. 41. 

* Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by William C. Beecher and Samuel 
Scoville, p. 88. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 53 

had already begun, and the old sexton in consternation 
made some remark about the devil while Henry hurried 
into church/ 

Sir Isaac Newton's first real fight seems to have been 
an epoch-maker in his life. It was the boy just above 
him in his class who made the trouble, and that is not 
saying very much for the school ability of either, since, 
at that time, Newton was the lowest in his form. New- 
ton had always been such a quiet, well-behaved, in- 
dolent creature that the other boy thought he would see 
what he was made of, so he kicked him and found out. 
After the boy was thoroughly whipped, the schoolmas- 
ter's son told Newton that his victory would not be 
complete unless he rubbed his opponent's nose against 
the stone wall, and this Newton proceeded to do, drag- 
ging him to the wall by the ears.^ 

Sir Walter Scott in his boyhood days was equally 
ready to tell a story or fight,' He himself once said 
that he was "an incorrigibly idle imp, who was always 
longing to do something else than what was enjoined." * 

Wordsworth was a stubborn, wayward, and intrac- 
table child. ^ He was the only one of her five children 
for whose future his mother had any anxiety, and the 
cause of this, according to Wordsworth," was his stiff, 
moody, and violent temper. One day while at play, 
he dared his older brother to strike a whip through a 
family painting on the wall, and when his brother re- 
fused, he promptly did it himself. 

James Russell Lowell, so late in adolescence as his 

> Ibid., p. 61. 

2 Brewster's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, Vol. I, p. 8. 
' Sir Walter Scott, by R. Shelton Mackenzie, p. 34. 
< Ibid., p. 35. 

5 The Early Life of Wordsworth, by Emile Legouis, p. 24. 

6 Autobiographical Memoranda. 



54 MIND IN THE MAKING 

senior year in college, was fined for cutting the seat in 
which he sat in class-room.^ 

Moncure D. Conway tells, in his autobiography, of 
a practical joke which he played on Dr. Peck, the 
president of Dickinson College, in which Conway was 
a student. "A Methodist conference was to gather at 
Staunton, Virginia, and President Peck was to read 
a report on the college. Staunton was famous for 
its lunatic asylum, whose physician was Dr. Strib- 
ling. Under an assumed name," Mr. Conway says, 
"I wrote to Dr. Stribling that a harmless lunatic had 
gone off to Staunton, who imagined himself president 
of Dickinson College, and fancied he had a report to 
make to the conference. Dr. Peck's appearance was 
described minutely, and Dr. Stribling was requested to 
detain him in comfort until his friends could take 
charge of him. . . . Dr. Peck was met by Dr. Stribling 
in a carriage, and supposed that such was the arrange- 
ment of the conference for his entertainment. Of 
course the deception was soon discovered at the 
asylum." ^ 

Even St. Augustine, in his childhood, was the same 
little savage as one to-day expects a normal boy to be, 
"deceiving my tutors, my masters, my parents, from 
love of play, eagerness to see vain shows, and restless- 
ness to imitate thera," as he pathetically laments in his 
Confessions. "Thefts also I committed from my 
parents' cellar and table," he sorrowfully continues, 
"enslaved by greediness, or that I might have to give 
to boys, who sold me their play, which all the while they 
liked no less than I."^ Orchard-robbing, also, may 

' Horace E. Scudder's Life of James Russell Lowell, Vol. I, p. 30. 
2 Autobiography of Moncure Daniel Conway, Vol. I, p. 66. 
' Co7ifessions, pp. 17-18. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 55 

claim the distinction of antiquity, for Augustine informs 
us that there was a pear tree near his father's vineyard, 
laden with very bad tasting fruit. "To shake and rob 
this, some lewd young fellows of us went, late one 
night (having, according to our pestilent custom, pro- 
longed our sports in the street till then), and took huge 
loads, not for our eating, but to fling to the very hogs, 
having only tasted them. And this, but to do what we 
liked only because it was misliked."^ 

The age at which boys come to think that laws and 
the recognized rules of right conduct should be volun- 
tarily respected and obeyed is an interesting question 
for students of child-life. The great majority of those 
included in this study say that they did not reach this 
stage until after they were fifteen years old. About one- 
half were over sixteen, and not a few were seventeen 
years of age or older. 

Biological studies seem to indicate that man passes 
through the physical development of the race. The 
rudimentary organs in man, variously estimated at from 
100 to 125 or more, are proof of what the physical life 
of the race has been. Many of these atavistic char- 
acteristics disappear before birth, while others remain 
as constant reminders of man's humble origin. During 
about the fifth and sixth months, the human foetus is 
covered with "somewhat long dark hair," except on 
those places which are also bare in quadrumana.^ The 
rudimentary hair on man has the characteristic arrange- 
ment of the hair on the same part of the body of quad- 
rumanous animals. This is especially noticeable on 
the upper and lower arm of man where the hair turns 

> Ibid., p. 23. 

2 Wiedersheim's Structure of Man, p. 5, and Romanes' Darwin and 
after Darwin, Vol. I, p. 92. 



56 MIND IN THE MAKING 

toward the elbow, "a peculiarity which occurs nowhere 
else in the animal kingdom, with the exception of the 
anthropoid apes and a few American monkeys, where it 
presumably has to do with arboreal habits."^ The 
vermiform appendix, which is a functionally active part 
of the digestive canal of many herbivorous animals, has 
degenerated in man to a useless and dangerous blind 
projection of the alimentary canal. The pineal gland, 
which once caused so much discussion, is now under- 
stood to be the surviving rudimentary centre of a 
formerly functioning central eye. 

It is well known that there is not the same advan- 
tageous arrangement of organs in man as in quad- 
rupeds. In many details they are evidently better 
suited to a quadrupedal position than an upright one. 
We are, therefore, led to assume either that equal skill 
was not employed in planning man's mechanical or- 
ganization, or that his change from the quadrupedal 
to an upright position is comparatively recent, and that 
there has not been sufficient time for the structural de- 
tails to adapt themselves to the new conditions. 

Recent study in race psychology and child study has 
led to the belief that there is the same recapitulation in 
the psychic life as in the physical. The child manifests 
many tendencies that are characteristic of savages. His 
fears,^ tendency to truancy and vagrancy,^ thieving,* 
love for gaudy colors and ornamentation, anger,^ and 
feelings in the presence of nature and water,*^ all point 
to the same conclusion. The preceding pages have 

• Darwin and after Darwin, Vol. I, p. 89. 

2 G. Stanley Hall: American Journal of Psuchology, Vol. VIII, p. 157. 

3 Kline: Ibid., Vol. XI, p. 192, and Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. V, p. 381. 

* Daw.son: American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XI, p. 195. 
6 G. Stanley Hall: Ibid., Vol. X, p. 516. 

8 F. E. Bolton: Ibid., Vol, X, p. 169, and Quantz, Ibid., Vol. IX. p. 449. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 57 

given the result of an investigation in certain criminal 
tendencies of boyhood. It remains to inquire whether 
they also are not psychical reverberations of long past 
ages. 

The belief that primitive man was an upright and 
peace-loving creature, who never thought of harming 
anybody until taught how by those who had out- 
grown their pristine virtue, has always been a charming 
thought. This view has, however, been vigorously op- 
posed. "The morality of primitive savages is wholly 
animal. It is the right of the strongest in all its bru- 
tality. The few ethical ideas already gotten or in proc- 
ess of formation are simply the result of unconsciously 
acquired habits of action. Their actions are not 
controlled by their reason. The Australian language 
has no words for justice, error, or crime." * 

In primitive society the moral law is limited to the 
relations between members of the same tribe. Any act 
is lawful and right when a stranger is concerned. He 
stands outside of the law. This is true not only of men 
of another race, but also of those of neighboring tribes. 
Against them any act of violence or treachery is justi- 
fiable. In Polynesia hatred for their neighbors was so 
general that Cook said, "I could have exterminated the 
entire race had I followed the advice that I received. 
The inhabitants of all the villages and hamlets begged 
me to destroy their neighbors." ^ Letourneau observes 
that it was a recognition of this primitive ferocity that 
enabled the English missionaries to depopulate Society 
Islands at a single blow, by pitting one-half the popula- 
tion against the other half. 

• Letourneau's L' Evolution de la Morale, Paris, p. 186. 
^Ibid., pp. 162-163. 



58 MIND IN THE MAKING 

T)'lor quotes* from Schomburgk and Kops, the first 
of whom has drawn pleasant pictures of the dehghtful 
home life, honesty, and truthfulness of the Caribs, and 
the other of the Papuans of Dory, "where they have 
not been corrupted by the vices of the white men." 
But Tylor adds that "those who have fought with them 
call them monsters of ferocity and treachery. . . . 
Cruelty and cunning in war seem to them right and 
praiseworthy." 

"Among the Ahts of British Columbia, Sproat re- 
marks that an article placed in an Indian's charge on 
his good faith is perfectly safe, yet thieving is a common 
vice where the property of other tribes or of white men 
is concerned."^ 

"Although the Africans within their own tribe-limits 
have strict rules of property, travellers describe how a 
Zulu war party, who have stealthily crept upon a distant 
village and massacred men, women, and children, will 
leave behind them the ransacked kraal flaring on the 
horizon and return with exulting hearts and loads of 
plunder." 

Morality has been a growth. Acts which in one age 
were thought to have their roots in the very foundation 
soil of virtue, are stamped by following ages as grossly 
immoral. The beginnings of morality are to be found in 
the instinctive feeling for self-preservation. But strict 
individualism was too severe a strain, and the gregarious 
instinct, common to animals and man, led to association 
for mutual aid and protection. These protective groups 
were at first small, but they grew as need for more 
organized assistance increased. 

^Anthropology, pp. 406-407. 
^Ibid., p. 413. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 59 

In the conflict between these social groups, Gum- 
plowicz maintains, is to be found the necessary condi- 
tion of social organization. "The hostile contact of 
difl^erent social elements of unlike strength is the first 
condition for the creation of rights; the conditions 
established by force and accepted in weakness, if con- 
tinued, become rightful."^ 

Cannibalism was a common custom among primitive 
people, and its morality was beyond question. Man 
was looked upon by others as merely an animal. They 
not only killed and ate their enemies, but often women 
and infants. Later cannibalism was restricted to ene- 
mies, except in case of famine. Oldfield says that the 
aborigines of Australia regarded human flesh as a great 
delicacy, especially that of girls and young women. As 
for the men they were beasts of burden to be wounded 
or killed without hesitation. It wds a common practice 
among the Australians to eat infants. The mother 
might relieve her grief by sobs, if they were not too loud. 
She was somewhat appeased, however, on receiving her 
legal share, the child's head, and devoured it with evi- 
dent feelings of sweet pain. The Guarayos of South 
America pursued men much as they hunted wild beasts. 
They took them alive if possible that they might fatten 
them and keep them as reserve food.^ 

Cannibalism has been by no means limited to ene- 
mies captured in war. In New Zealand slaves were 
eaten, especially boys and girls, who were cared for and 
fattened for that purpose.^ Ordinarily these human 
banquets were reserved for festal days as a mark of 
honor for guests. At other times they ate slaves to 

' Gumplowicz: Outlines of Sociology, p. 121. 

2 Letourneau's L' Evolution de la Morale, pp. 81-88. 

3 Ibid., p. 92. 



CO MIND IN THE MAKING 

punish them for theft or some other offence. Can- 
nibalism to them was perfectly natural and right. 
"Pourquoi ne pas manger des hommes? disaient-ils a 
Marsden. Les grands poissons mangent les petits, 
quelquefois ceux de leur propre espece, A leur tour, 
les petits poissons mangent des animalcules." 

Morality seems always to be a matter of conditions. 
That which circumstances so strongly force upon a 
people that resistance to it endangers existence is felt 
to be the right thing to do. Cannibalism was especially 
prevalent among those who lived where food was 
scarce, as on small islands. Among the Polynesians 
the stages of advance can be clearly traced. At first 
they ate one another recklessly, as we have found 
true of the New Zealanders. Afterwards, except in 
war, only the chiefs had this privilege. Still later the 
custom was preserved only in religious sacrifices as a 
symbolic form. 

The growth of moral sentiment is further illustrated 
by those races that forbade women to eat human flesh 
because it was regarded as such a delicacy that the men 
wished to reserve the privilege for themselves. An ab- 
horrence of the practice gradually developed among the 
women of those races, which finally became so strong 
that they seemed to have been originally endowed with 
the dislike. When, however, we trace this feeling back 
to its origin, we find that they were just as fond of this 
food as were their lords, whenever they were allowed to 
indulge. The New Zealand women, for example, were 
as cannibalistic as the men, while among the inhabitants 
of some other islands of the same race and civilization 
as the New Zealanders, the women, at first denied the 
dainty, finally came to look upon it with the keenest 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 61 

disgust/ The growth of the feehng of abhorrence for 
human flesh among these can be observed until, finally, 
the custom entirely disappeared or remained in certain 
symbolic observances. 

Primitive man had absolutely no regard for human 
life. "II est sur que, chez les hommes primitifs, le 
m^pris de la vie humaine est sans limites. Au point de 
vue des sentiments d'altruisme, de solidarity, les races 
humaines tres inferieures sont incomparablement au- 
dessous des animaux qu'on pent appeler civilises, des 
abeilles et des fourmis, par exemple." The primitive 
aborigines of Australia used human fat for ointment, 
and were accustomed to bait their fish-hooks with the 
fat of infants killed for that purpose.^ 

To kill enough enemies to make an honorable ap- 
pearance before the gods was the earnest desire of 
many early peoples, and often they were overcome with 
sorrow at the thought of the comparatively small show- 
ing of their victims. The natives of New Caledonia 
felt that manhood consisted in persistent fighting, and 
were very bitter against those who, through authority or 
otherwise, prevented it. "We are no longer men," 
they said, "because we no longer fight one another.'" 
"The young Sioux Indian, likewise, till he had killed 
his man, was not allowed to stick the feather in his 
head-dress and have the title of brave or warrior; he 
could scarcely get a girl to marry him till he won the 
feather. So the young Dayak of Borneo could not get 
a wife till he had taken a head, and it was thus with the 
skull or scalp which the Naga warrior of Asam had to 
bring home. . . . The trophy need not have been taken 

« Ibid... pp. 97-98. 
2 Ibid., p. 102. 
» Ibid., p. 104. 



62 MIND IN THE MAKING 

from an enemy, and might have been secured by the 
blackest treachery, provided, only, that the victim 
were not of the slayer's own tribe. Yet these Sioux 
among themselves held manslaughter to be a crime 
unless in blood revenge; and the Dayaks punished 
murder."'^ 

Altruism arose as a sort of enlarged egoism, when 
individual selfishness no longer served its egoistic pur- 
pose. In many of his horrible customs primitive man 
occupied a level lower than that of a large number of the 
higher animals.^ But even at this low stage of develop- 
ment a certain kind of social solidarity was necessary 
to prevent the purely selfish desires of each leading to 
the complete annihilation of the race. Self-preserva- 
tion, the strongest of all egoistic instincts, required the 
extension of self to all members of the tribe. Tribal 
interests thus became self-interest, not because of any 
moral ideas about the rights of others, but solely because 
each one's self-interests were better served. This en- 
largement of self to include the tribe probably occurred 
very early in the life of primitive man, since before this 
no one could sleep in peace. 

Affection between parents and offspring seems to be 
of comparatively recent origin. The primitive savage 
left his children to the fate that chance might bring, 
without any other training than that of the tribal cus- 
toms and practices. As soon as the child was old enough 
to look out for himself, amid the simple conditions of 
life, the parents took no further interest in him. Women 
were ill-treated, and love of the child for its mother was, 
in many races, unknown. In Polynesia the father en- 

> Tylor's Anthropology, p. 412. 

2 Letourneau's L' Evolution dc la Morale, p. 164. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 63 

couraged the child to scorn and abuse its mother, and 
in Austraha brutality toward parents was common/ 

Referring to the Bedouins as a type of primitive races, 
Gabriel Charms wrote, "To fall upon caravans of 
strangers, to drive off flocks, capture goods, kill and 
massacre the defenders, especially if they are the in- 
h^itants of cities, such are the virtues which they rate 
highest. All these ignoble heroes of Bedouin legend 
we would send to the galleys as highway robbers."^ 

"The astonishment which I felt," said Darwin, "as 
I first saw a troop of Terra-del-Fuegians on a wild and 
rugged coast, I shall never forget; for the thought flashed 
through my mind at once: Thus were our forefathers. 
These men were absolutely naked of clothing, and covered 
only with paint. Their long hair was twisted together, 
their mouths bedrivelled from excitement, and their ex- 
pression wild, amazed, and suspicious. They possessed 
scarcely any skill at all, and lived like wild beasts on 
whatever they could catch. They had no government, 
and no mercy toward those not of their own race." 

"L'homme, avant de troquer avec ses semblables, se 
procura, tout par lui-meme, au moyen de la chasse, 
de la peche, du vol, etc. En effet, comme I'a remarqu^ 
M. Muirhead, emere en latin n'avait pas, a I'origine, la 
valeur d'acheter avec de Vargent, mais seulement celle 
de 'prendre, acquerir, rcccvoir."^ 

Of the ancient Germans Csesar said, "Robberies be- 
yond the bounds of each community have no infamy, 
but are commended as a means of exercising youth and 
diminishing sloth."* 

» Ibid., pp. 165-166. 

' Quoted by Gumplowicz in Outlines of Sociology, p. 114. 
' Ferrero: Lcs Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme, p. 179. 
? Tylor: Anthropology, p. 414. 



64 MIND IN THE MAKING 

"Take a primitive savage, a gregarious human being; 
what are his moral ideas ? He is bound to his fellows 
by the natural feeling of eonneetion. They help him 
in his need ; to hold to them, help them, and stand by 
them loyally is one of his moral ideas. But strangers 
from another horde waylay them, try to get their prop- 
erty, invade their hunting-ground, slay them occasion- 
allv, and steal them; therefore to kill these strangers 
and rob them is another of his moral ideas." ^ 

The same contradiction between ideas exists in the 
min(l of the child as existed in the race at different 
periods. There has never been a sudden complete 
change in the ideas and sentiments of the race. The 
old persists and overlaps the new. This brings with it 
contratliction. So we find the ideas and sentiments 
springing from the belief in the right of property by 
seizure existing in the minds of men side by side with 
those new ideas which came with the growing belief 
that ownership rests solely on purchase or exchange. 
The illogical is thus as truly a historical force as the 
logical." This persistence of racial characteristics and 
their exceedingly slow elimination is an illustration of 
Ferrero's law of least effort. Immediate organic or 
psychic change would involve disintegration, an exag- 
gerated fatigue, from which recovery would be difficult 
or impossible. Change should never be so sudden as to 
make tlisintegration overbalance integration. 

The ethical life of children resembles that of primi- 
tive man in the absence of a clearly defined moral ob- 
ligation. Both act largely on the impulse of the mo- 
ment. In neither case is the conscience organized so 

' Gumplowicz: Chitlines of Sociology, p. 171. 

' Furrero: Lcs Lois Psychologiqucs du Symbolisme, p. 184. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 65 

as to be greatly influenced by the welfare of others to 
the apparent detriment of self, or by a future advantage 
gained by present self-denial. 

"One often hears the English schoolboy described 
as a savage, and after sixteen years' experience of the 
Andamanese, I find that in many ways they closely re- 
semble the average lower-class English country school- 
boy."^ "Primitive peoples under the exact rule of our 
culture, young country recruits in the barracks, and 
school children have much in common." ^ 

Le Bon has shown how, in a crowd, the older racial 
tendencies come to the surface and exert the controlling 
influence over the actions of adults. At such a time 
criminal acts are frequent "because our savage de- 
structive instincts are the inheritance left dormant in 
all of us from the primitive ages."' "Men, the most 
unlike in the matter of their intelligence, possess in- 
stincts, passions, and feelings that are very similar." 
Isolated, man "may be a cultivated individual; in a 
crowd, he is a barbarian — that is, a creature acting by 
instinct."* Under these conditions inhibitions, the re- 
sult of ages of culture, are temporarily paralyzed, and 
the man becomes again a child, for it is just in respect 
of these inhibitions that the moral life of the civilized 
adult differs from that of children. 

The child also has mental states similar to those of 
the savage "in the phenomena of delusions and illu- 
sions, fads and fancies, questionings and dogmatizings, 
nonsense-talk, language-play, verbigeration, etc."^ 

• Portman: Vide Chamberlain's, The Child, p. 296. 
2 Chamberlain: The Child, p. 298. 

' The Crowd, p. 64. 

* Ibid., p. 36. 

6 Chamberlain: The Child, p. 301. 



66 MIND IN THE MAKING 

"Savages and children are alike again in their tendency 
to 'receive all sorts of ideas, of entirely heterogeneous 
origins, without thinking of making them harmonize 
one with another in the least.'" "Children," again, 
"'divert themselves with mere words, rhyming them, 
singing them, careless of their nonsensicalness. They 
invent words through very pleasure of verbigerating.'" 
In like manner, "'races in their childhood, in the new 
delight of speech neologise without regard to use or 
necessity, impoverishing their language by making it 
plethoric of synonyms.'"^ Letourneau, also, charac- 
terizes savages as almost infantile in many ways. "The 
most redoubtable warriors would frequently burst into 
tears at the slightest provocation." ^ 

Primitive races and children are especially susceptible 
to suggestion. It is also this readiness for suggestion 
that exerts the greatest influence on the crowd, causing 
it to do things which the members as individuals would 
scorn. Here, again, the higher and later acquired in- 
tellectual life with its inhibitions yields to the lower and 
older racial passions and impulses of primitive man and 
the cultured person becomes again Jhe savage. This 
primitive characteristic of openness to suggestion and 
auto-suggestion, so noticeable in children, by which an 
idea immediately goes out in action, brings them into 
close relation to the savage, and accounts for much of 
their so-called wickedness. 

Race instincts are amenable to primitive custom, and 
not to the laws of civilization. Hence it is that children 
so often feel independent of law. "It is certain that 
to many youths the wish to make sport of justice and to 

' Tanzi: Vide Ibid., p. 302. 

" L'Evoluliun de la Morale, p. 168. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 67 

compel the authorities to busy themselves with them, 
leads by way of boasting to an irresistible tendency to 
evil doing." ^ Stealing is one of the most common ways 
in which race survivals face modern law. Ferriani is 
of the opinion that at "from eight to fourteen years the 
child is almost always a thief." ^ 

The race tendencies of primitive man cannot properly 
be classified under morality. They are neither moral 
nor immoral. They are simply stages in evolution in 
which man finds himself, and to the conditions of which 
all his nature strives to conform. Ethics involves a 
conception of social relations which sees beyond the 
processes of nature and seeks to control them for moral 
ends. The imitation of nature's methods by man, be- 
fore he has come to a realization of social relations, can 
no more be judged by an ethical standard than can 
nature herself. In the past many acts which are now 
classed as criminal were an aid to social evolution. The 
law of blood vengeance gave a decided tendency toward 
law and order during a period in which external restraints 
were few or altogether wanting, and individual respon- 
sibility to society was unknown. The law of "an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," as well as war, has 
served a useful purpose in uniting social groups, and in 
teaching them the necessity of cooperation.^ This ser- 
vice, however, cannot rightly be called ethical since it 
was rendered blindly, without thought of moral ends. 

As we pass from primitive people to the beginnings 
of civilization we find the same disregard of the rights of 
others. The immediate personal interests of the in- 
vading band are paramount, and murder and the most 

1 Maironi, quoted in Chamberlain's The Child, p. 368. 

2 Chamberlain's The Child, p. 373. 
2 Tylor's Anthropology, p. 432. 



68 MIND IN THE MAKING 

exquisite torture are legitimate in accomplishing their 
purpose. 

"As the Saxons and Angles plundered and desolated 
long before they actually settled, so now their northern 
kinsmen followed the same course. We first find a 
period in which the object of the invaders seems to be 
simply plunder. They land, they harry the country, 
they fight, if need be, to secure their booty; but whether 
defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, 
and sail away with what they have gathered."^ 

The Danish conquest of England was one long 
series of invasions, plunderings, and slaughter. Some 
adventurers, whether king or lesser robber, representing 
the type of "the fittest" in that period, organized and 
carried out the marauding expeditions. During the 
early part of iEthelred's reign their "invasions once 
more became mere piratical incursions."^ They 
marched through the valley of the Thames, " 'doing ac- 
cording to their wont and kindling their beacons ' — that 
is, no doubt, wasting and burning the whole country."^ 

In Germany, toward the close of the Middle Ages, 
robberies were so common and so respectable that a 
cardinal of the Roman church was able to say that "all 
Germany is nothing but a robber's den, and among the 
nobility it is the most respectable calling."* From the 
twelfth or thirteenth centuries till well into the six- 
teenth, the law of the individual prevailed, and personal 
contest was the method of judicial settlement.^ Men 
fought for whomever paid them, and when this occupa- 

' Freeman's The History of the Norman Conquest of England, Vol. I, p. 29. 

2 Ibid., p. 180. 

' [hid.. Vol. I. p. 223. 

* Geschichte der Deutschen KiUtur, von Dr. Georg Steinhausen, p. 276. 

* Ibid., p. 276. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 69 

tion failed, or the compensation was inadequate, the 
enterprising ones joined robber bands or individually 
held up such as came their way/ 

The Wild Beggars of the sixteenth century, who 
made the first organized protest — vicious though it was 
— against the atrocious cruelty of the Duke of Alva, 
and the Blood Council, and the legalized pirates, the 
Beggars of the Sea, are some of the forms that these 
primitive tendencies took in the Low Countries during 
the period of national construction and reconstruction. 

Here also belong the travelling scholars, toward the 
close of the Middle Ages, "who, as treasure-diggers and 
exorcists, made successful attacks on the savings of the 
peasants and on the provisioiLS in their chimneys. 
'They desired to become priests,' then they came from 
Rome with shaven crowns and collected for a surplice; 
or they were necromancers, then they wore a yellow 
train to their coats and came from the Frau Venus- 
berg; when they entered a house they exclaimed, 
'Here comes a travelling scholar, a master of seven 
liberal sciences, an exorciser of the devil, and from hail- 
storms, fire, and monsters'; and thereupon they made 
'experiments.' Together with them came disbanded 
Landshiechie, often associated with the dark race of 
outlaws, who worked with armed hand against the life 
and property of the inhabitants." 

In different ages and under various conditions, these 
primitive instincts appear in varying guises, but they 
are always the expression of the same racial impulses. 

In 1770, as choice a crowd of commercial robbers as 
one could wish to meet gathered on the Lena River not 

' Ibid., p. 428. 

' Gustav Freytag's Pictures of German Life in the XVlh, XVIth, and 
XVIIlh centuries, trans, by Mrs. Malcolm. Vol. 2, pp. 223-224. 



70 MIND IN THE MAKING 

far from Yakutsk. "Long caravans of pack-horses 
and mules and tented wagons came rumbling, dust- 
covered, across the fields, bells a-jingle, driven by Cos- 
sacks all the way from Saint Petersburg, six thousand 
miles." There were drunken brawlers, "lawless as 
Arabs; and the only law they knew was the law they 
wielded. . . . Tartar hordes came with horses to sell, 
freebooters of the boundless desert, banditti in league 
with the Cossacks to smuggle across the borders of the 
Chinese. And Chinese smugglers, splendid in silk 
attire, hobnobbed with exiles, who included every class 
from courtiers banished for political offenses to crim- 
inals with ears cut off and faces slit open."^ 

Nor does it matter whether it be the Polish-Russian 
exile Count Benyowsky, "who, on capturing the fort at 
Bolcheresk, imprisoned all the women and children in 
the chapel, and at the first refusal of the surrounding 
Cossacks to surrender set fire to each of the four corners 
of the church," ^ or Cobham, who, after taking a Span- 
ish ship in the Bay of Biscay, when "all resistance was 
over and the heat of the battle had cooled . . . ordered 
his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew and 
every Spaniard aboard — whether in arms or not — to 
sew them up in the mainsail and to fling them over- 
board,"^ it is still the same primitive instincts of the 
race ruling the individual. 

In England, shortly after the middle of the sixteenth 
century, this primitive group-individualism adopting, as 
it always does, the most effective means for getting 
results that the period offers, took the form of legalized 

> A. C. Laut's Vikings of the Pacific, pp. 107-108. 

2 Ibid., pp. 121-127. 

3 Introduction to Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers, edited by 
Howard Pyle, p. 20. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 71 

piracy. During the early part of Elizabeth's reign the 
Channel was alive with pirates bearing letters of marque 
from various princes and Huguenot leaders. A little 
later the truce with France and the Papal decree giving 
all of the New World to Spain made the West Indies 
and the neighboring coast the most profitable field of 
operations for these enterprising men. "The Puritan- 
ism of the sea-dogs went hand-in-hand with their love 
of adventure. To break through the Catholic mo- 
nopoly of the New World, to kill Spaniards, to sell 
negroes, to sack gold-ships, were, in these men's minds, 
a seemly work for the 'elect of God."" 

Francis Drake, the pirate and brigand, who robbed 
the treasure-house of New Spain at Nombre de Dios, 
waylaid and plundered the Spanish mule-trains carrying 
gold from the Pacific coast, pillaged Valparaiso, and 
scuttled the dismantled Spanish ships in port, encourag- 
ing his crew, when even their savage natures were 
horrified at his atrocious murders by assuring them 
that "the worst boy aboard would never nede to goe 
agayne to sea, but be able to lyve in England like a 
right good gentleman," " who sacked Callao, capturing 
and robbing every boat that came his way, until finally 
the greatest prize of all, the Glory of the South Sea, so 
weighted down with gold and silver that she could 
hardly sail, fell his prey, was received in England, on 
his return, by ringing bells, and messengers hurried to 
London with the news that Drake had returned,^ and 
all the people gave themselves up to a week of holidays, 
while Elizabeth met a request for his surrender "by 

' Green's Short History of the English People, p. 415. 

2 Quoted in A. C. Laut's Vikings of the Pacific, from the Hakluyt Society 
Proceedings. 

3 Ibid., p. 165. 



(2 MIND IN THE MAKING 

knighting the freebooter, and by wearing in her crown 
the jewels he had offered her as a present." ^ It is 
interesting that, in the midst of this wholesale robbing 
and murdering, Drake's chaplain groaned "in spirit to 
see the power of Sathan so farre prevail " ^ among the 
Indians who brought their sick to be healed. But un- 
fortunately for the growth of culture, this good man is 
not the only one whose thinking has been vitiated by 
the narrow concepts used in its deductions; nor is the 
error peculiar to his age. 

But Drake was not alone in having his acts of piracy 
condoned with lavish honors. Such deeds were looked 
upon as right if they did not create too formidable in- 
ternational complications. The wrong, as with the 
Spartans, was not in the act, but in being caught. 

In 1668, Henry jNIorgan, under a commission from the 
Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, sacked and ravaged 
the Cuban coast, and on his return from an unusually 
successful cruise of devastation, he was honored for his 
enterprise by an appointment as Commander-in-chief 
of the British war squadron in Jamaica. His capture 
of the city of Panama required the formality of action, 
and he was sent a prisoner to England, only to return 
a little later, knighted by the king, as Lieutenant- 
Governor and Commander-in-chief of his Majesty's 
forces. 

The history of the growth of piracy is an interesting 
chapter in the evolution of criminality. Beginning in 
the openly patronized sea-robbers of the latter half of 
the sixteenth century, it developed into the secretly ap- 
proved buccaneers of the seventeenth, and reached its 

> Green's Short History of the English People, p. 415. 
2 Quoted in A. C. Laut's Vikings of the Pacific, p. 164. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 73 

logical culmination in the admittedly criminal piracy of 
the succeeding period. We have here an instance of the 
persistence of primitive tendencies in new adaptations. 
Precisely the same racial instincts whose unrestrained 
gratification was thought worthy of distinguishing 
honors in the sixteenth century, send men to the gallows 
in the eighteenth. As the social idea of morality 
alters, these instincts continue, for a time, to express 
themselves in the same old way, and those in whom 
they are irresistible pay the penalty; then new outlets 
are found through paths less illegal, even though they 
may be fully as immoral. 

A fact by no means unimportant in this connection is 
the social and intellectual standing of the families of 
some of the most famous of the pirates. Morgan came 
of good stock; Bartholomew Roberts began life as an 
honest sailor and is known to have been, at the start, 
determinedly opposed to buccaneering; Kidd was the 
son of a non-conformist minister, and was selected by 
the British authorities as the right man to crush piracy; 
while Esquemeling, who was associated with Morgan 
in his attack on the city of Panama, was so literary as 
afterward to write a most entertaining and illuminating 
history of the buccaneers. Nor is there any convincing 
evidence that these men were degenerate offspring of 
good families. They seem rather to have been men of 
unusual enterprise, who adapted themselves pretty suc- 
cessfully to the prevailing morality, or, as in the case of 
Captain Kidd and his contemporaries, held to the 
border line by continuing to act on instincts that, in 
the more enlightened, were gradually becoming rudi- 
mentary. Kidd himself seems to have been a brave 
man of good intentions who responded in a racial way 



74 MIND IN THE MAKING 

to the situation that confronted him. Even in his clay 
piracy was not considered wholly bad. 

In estimating the significance of actions, the general 
attitude of society toward them is of fundamental im- 
portance, and well into the eighteenth century respect- 
able men of social standing were not averse to profiting 
from ventures of this sort. When the effects of the 
famous Bluebeard were examined after his death, in- 
criminating letters^ were found from the governor of 
North Carolina, who, in return for his share, had given 
the pirate the protection of his official influence, and 
from various prominent New York traders. 

Among themselves these pirates seem always to have 
maintained a strict code of honor. "For in the prizes 
which they take," according to their associate, Esque- 
meling, "it is severely prohibited to anyone to take 
anything to themselves: hence all they take is equally 
divided, as hath been said before: yea, they take a 
solemn oath to each other not to conceal the least thing 
they find among the prizes; and if anyone is found 
false to the said oath, he is immediately turned out of 
the society. They are very civil and charitable to each 
other; so that if anyone wants what another has, with 
great willingness they give it one to another."^ Nor 
are we justified in putting this in quite the same class as 
the proverbial "honor among thieves," for Captain 
Charles Johnson says that they had "a very mean 
opinion of pickpockets and housebreakers."^ 

When one compares the standards which guided the 

' Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers, edited by Howard Pyle, p. 254. 

2 Howard Pyle's edition of Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers, 
p. 82. 

5 Howard Pyle's edition of Johnson's History of Highwaymen and 
Pirates, p. 285. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 75 

actions of these men, and their ways of meting out 
justice, with the organizations that boys form at a cer- 
tain stage in their development, he is struck with the 
remarkable similarity revealed. One of these rudi- 
mentary societies which arose spontaneously and grew 
naturally, unhampered by rules laid down by adults, 
has been described* by an observer. The school was 
situated in the centre of a farm of eight hundred acres, 
over which the boys were allowed to roam at will. 
Among the walnuts, and birds' eggs, and squirrels, in 
which the land abounded, "the boys were in the condi- 
tion of early man before the earth had become so 
crowded as to require him to toil for bread or to fight 
for a hunting-ground." But as the school grew, its nuts 
became too few. Disputes and fights were becoming 
common, so some of the boys proposed that after a 
group once reached a tree and climbed it, the nuts that 
fell should be theirs. "Any nut-hunters coming to a 
tree after the first party had been there, and wishing to 
shake it still further, are required by custom to pile 
up all the nuts that lie under the tree, for until this is 
done, the unwritten law does not permit their shaking 
more nuts upon the ground. Anyone who violated this 
rule and shook the nuts off a tree before piling up those 
beneath, would be universally regarded as dishonest, 
and every boy's hand would be against him." Birds' 
and squirrels' nests were appropriated by tacking pieces 
of paper containing the finder's name upon the tree. 
At the close of the season all privileges lapsed, and the 
following year a redistribution by the same method 
occurred. 

' John Johnson, Jr., Rudimentary Society among Boys; Overland 
Monthly, Second Series, Vol. II, 1883, p. 353. 



76 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Rabbit trapping came to be quite a problem in this 
school because the places frequented by them were 
few and the traps were too close together. "After two 
years of this unsatisfactory state of affairs, a large boy 
who had set his traps rather early proceeded to destroy 
any that were set closer to his than he thought desira- 
ble. . . . His example was followed by others, and by 
common consent a limited distance between traps was 
agreed upon as proper." 

Social solidarity is a growth. In its most primitive 
form it rests probably on sociality, the gregariousness 
of lower animals. The number constituting a social 
group varies at different evolutional levels. Among the 
lowest savages it may not exceed fifteen, while with 
those higher in the scale the number increases to one 
hundred or more, and when we reach the Iroquois In- 
dians seventy thousand people, according to Lewis 
Morgan, lived together in a kind of social unity. As 
man evolves, his self-consciousness enlarges. He wants 
better food and better shelter, and in his growing inter- 
course with others complications arise, so that very soon 
the narrow egoism of small groups becomes inadequate 
to his egoistic ends. This increase in the size of the 
group would, in turn, lead to the restriction of self. 
In a large body — several hundred or more — a leader 
must be obeyed, and in the councils the interests of all 
play an increasingly important part in determining 
action. When this union is momentary, to meet a 
single emergency, defeat follows. Civilization has been 
a growth from individualism to cooperation, and the 
end is not yet. 

In this respect the development of boys seems to 
take much the same course as the race has followed. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 77 

Giilick^ found that the games of boys under twelve 
years of age are individualistic and competitive, while 
early adolescence, from twelve to seventeen, is dis- 
tinctly the period of group games. Boys now co- 
operate in "team" work. Societies of various sorts 
are formed, and "gangs" begin their operations. 
Sheldon's studies,^ also, show that among boys of this 
age "there is a tendency to form social units character- 
istic of lower stages of civilization." Boys are now 
passing from the state of personal individualism into 
that of the group. Their games and depredations are 
carried out under organization, though the number 
that act together need not be large. A "gang," like 
a "crowd," is not characterized by size, but by its 
pervading spirit. At this time boys are still so far in- 
dividualistic as to care little for the rights of those out- 
side of their "crowd," and this hostile attitude toward 
society is one phase of the "criminal" instincts which 
appear during this period. The interests of their own 
set, however, they jealously guard, and it is this exten- 
sion of their individualism to include their immediate 
friends that constitutes the group individualism of 
early adolescence. It coincides quite closely with the 
racial stage in which primitive man united in smaller 
or larger groups for mutual solace and protection. 
They, too, had just emerged from the stage of personal 
individualism, and in the change their self had become 
enlarged to include their associates. The enemy of one 
member of the group is now the enemy of all, and 
pleasures and pains are shared in common. 

It is, of course, easy to draw the analogy so closely as 

• Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LIII, 1898, p. 801 
" Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. IX, p. 431. 



78 MIND IN THE MAKING 

to seem to disprove its validity. We must not expect 
phylogenetic stages to be exactly reproduced in the in- 
dividual; nor when they occur need they necessarily 
follow in the same order. There is no doubt that some 
children skip certain stages and take short cuts. Some- 
times this is forced upon them — often to their disad- 
vantage. Most of us are conscious that a part of our 
early life was cut out, and we are not always benefited 
by the operation. It would certainly be very strange 
if ages through which the race has lived could be 
blotted from its memory and leave no trace behind. 

Adults read their ideas of morality into children's 
acts, and then catalogue them as right or wrong, when 
in reality they may be neither. With young children 
this distinction usually resolves itself into what is per- 
mitted or forbidden, and the wickedniess of disobe- 
dience is greatly mitigated if no bad results follow. 

The so-called criminal instincts of children are the 
racial survivals of acts that in past ages fitted their 
possessors to survive. They were not merely right, 
but necessary at that time, and they were right because 
they were necessary, and because they stood for the 
best of which primitive man could conceive. 

This period of savagery, or semi-criminality, is nor- 
mal for all healthy boys. Those whose surroundings 
are favorable to a life of crime continue in it, finally to 
end in the reform school, and still later, probably, in the 
penitentiary, while those of better surroundings pass 
through it without permanent moral injury, and per- 
haps, indeed, with a stronger character and a keener 
insight into human nature. 

Crime is caused mainly by social conditions that are 
morally and intellectually unhygienic. One cannot 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 79 

escape this conviction if he is familiar with the changes 
for the better that occur in slum districts when once the 
old crime-haunted tenements are replaced by light 
and airy modern buildings, and the region made as 
clean and respectable as other residential sections of 
the city. 

The question of interest to society is not, Can children 
become criminals because of inherited tendencies? but 
rather. Must these constitutional peculiarities reveal 
themselves in the life of the individual, however un- 
favorable to their development the surroundings may 
be? I examined the record of 106 children, who had 
been placed in families by the Minnesota State School 
for Neglected and Dependent Children, in the hope of 
getting some information on this subject. The history- 
book of the institution showed that one or both of the 
parents of all these children were distinctly bad. The 
least of which any of them had been guilty was habitual 
drunkenness and desertion of their families. In 39 in- 
stances intemperance, insanity, or criminality was found 
in both parents, and 39 of the mothers were known to 
be prostitutes. The fathers of 2 had been convicted of 
murder, and 3 were serving a sentence in the peniten- 
tiary. This is certainly a good ancestry to produce 
criminals, if the effect of heredity is beyond control. 
The children whose record is given here include all 
those on the books of the institution who were more 
than 17 years of age when last investigated by the State 
agent, and whose parents, one or both, were known to 
be bad. All but 16 of them were older than 18 years. 
Fifty-two of these children were classed by the State 
agent as excellent, 36 as good, and 18 as bad. Those 
designated as "excellent" were so strong in character 



80 MIND IN THE MAKING 

and ability as to attract umisual attention, while by 
"good" was meant above reproach in character. One 
of those recorded as bad was a j^rostitute before enter- 
ing the school. Of all those of known bad parentage, 
then, 83.02 per cent, developed into young men and 
women of good character when placed in better sur- 
roundings. 

At the Wisconsin State School I studied the records of 
91 children. The same rules of procedure were fol- 
lowed as before, except that a few between the ages of 
16 and 17 were admitted. Both parents of 19 children 
were either intemperate or insane, or had committed a 
crime, and 13 of the mothers were prostitutes. In this 
school 12 were classed as excellent, 73 as good, and only 
6 had turned out badly. One of these 6, it was found, 
had been placed with a man who was a hard drinker, 
although this was not known when the boy was given 
to him. Another, one of the younger girls, was seduced 
by the man in whose family she was placed. It is 
quite possible that some may still revert, though in- 
herited characteristics usually appear in full strength 
by 16 years of age. 

When it is remembered that these children remained 
with their parents long enough to imbibe a good deal 
of immorality by contact, the significance of these 
figures greatly increases. Besides, the children are 
placed under an indenture contract and, except in rare 
instances, are treated as servants by those who take 
them. They are usually valued in proportion to the 
work they can do. 

The records of the Elmira Reformatory, under the 
splendid management of former Superintendent Brock- 
way, indicate the same preponderant influence of en- 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 81 

vironment, about 85 per cent, of the inmates being 
made into respectable, self-supporting men. 

We seem thus forced to conclude that, barring the 
degenerates, and they are comparatively few, children 
should not be classified as good and bad. They have 
tendencies and instincts, some of racial and others of 
family inheritance, but their permanent dispositions 
are yet unformed and will be mainly determined by 
their environment, which, of course, includes all that 
enters into their experience and education. 

The average age at which 255 boys were taken to 
the Waukesha (Wisconsin) Reform School was not 
quite 13.7 years. This is the time when the largest 
amount of energy is seeking occupation, and when wise 
guidance is particularly needed. Yet this is exactly what 
these boys do not get. They are left to the chance of 
the street. At this period of life the nerve-tissue is in 
a hyper-irrita})le state, and, as Clouston* finds, certain 
forms of emotional and irrational wilfulness, immoral- 
ity, impulsiveness, and adolescent insanity are not un- 
common. Escapades at this time do not necessarily 
point to a criminal nature. The excessive irritability 
of the nerve centres, to which the frequency of nervous 
disorders at this period points, and which will be con- 
sidered in a later chapter, makes them erratically sen- 
sitive. At this age children are especially susceptible 
to suggestion. 

The acts for which many of the boys were sent to the 
reformatory seem to have been a sort of reflex resist- 
ance to dull or disagreeable conditions of life, a blind 
effort to escape from a hateful monotony. The history- 
book shows that the common offences were disobedience, 

' The Neuroses o{ Development, p. 12. 



82 MIND IN THE MAKING 

running away from home or school, and steahng small 
articles, such as candy, tobacco, knives, or small amounts 
of money. The wish to have some fun was the prevail- 
ing motive with many. In comj^aratively few instances 
did the things that they took have much value, and 
most of these were articles which boys long for. They 
were generally bicycles, watches, and guns. Only 6 
boys out of 254 stole money in excess of $5.00. 

A sudden change comes in the early years of ado- 
lescence, and with it new demands. Energy is in ex- 
cess, and the childish sports which were formerly so 
absorbing, no longer satisfy. Early education, as al- 
ready emphasized, should include the meeting and over- 
coming of inherited nomadic and anti-social impulses. 

The successful control of these ancestral tendencies 
is the most tlifficult task of child-training. If oppor- 
tunity is given children to engage in enjoyable sports, 
exciting enough to satisfy their boundless imagination, 
and if school work is so planned as to respond to their 
varying interests, these rudimentary impulses may 
gradually be eliminated from their life. These reform- 
atory boys had not only been left to the unrestrained 
influence of these ancestral traits, but, in addition, the 
surroundings were such as to favor their abnormal de- 
velopment. The entire absence of the moral sense in 
many hardened criminals, resulting in practical rever- 
sion and in the redevelopment of those activities that 
are ordinarily rudimentary in the human race, is prob- 
ably due to the environment reviving their latent power 
of functioning. 

Infancy and childhood is a transition period from 
lesser to greater brain complexity. If conditions are 
favorable this complexity is in the direction of greater 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 83 

intellectual and moral perfection. New cell connec- 
tions are now being made, and the associations thus 
established determine the character of the man. It is 
probable that most of these connections are made un- 
consciously. Daily contact with associated ideas and 
acts will end in establishing them in the mental back- 
ground, however unnatural they may be. Natural and 
reasonable are relative terms. Their interpretation de- 
pends on the paths that have been made among the 
cells during their expansions from infancy through 
adolescence, when development followed, uncritically, 
the lines suggested by experience. The complexity that 
characterizes a developed brain is not a spontaneous 
growth. Though mental limitations and possibilities lie 
within the brain itself the direction that these possi- 
bilities shall take, resulting finally in pro-social aspira- 
tions or in anti-social tendencies, is determined from 
without. Criminal training may end in as complex 
cerebral associations as the best education. Enlarged, 
sound mentality is the result of life amid broad and 
sound social relations. The subjective possibility for 
character is actualized only under the influence of per- 
fecting social stimuli. Moral obtuseness is not neces- 
sarily the result of native incapacity. It is more often 
caused by constant exercise in perverted perceptions. 
Under the action of external stimuli modifications are 
constantly going on in a child's brain. The form that 
these modifications take depends on the relations found 
in experience. The child accepts relations as they are 
offered, and the ideas thus related form his standard 
for future judgment. The immediate value of an idea 
depends on responsive associations, and these are deter- 
mined by the relations prevailing in the mental back- 



84 MIND IN THE MAKING 

ground. Hasty action will be common unless there are 
arresting secondary associations of sufficient strength to 
hold the mind in balance until their full meaning can 
assert itself. The greater the number of these second- 
ary associations the more deliberate and reasonable will 
be the final decision. The relations resulting from con- 
stant contact with vicious surroundings account for 
much of the moral perversion that leads to thoughtless 
action, and later to crime. 

It is doubtful whether in three-fourths of the cases 
criminal tendencies are anything else than a convenient 
name with which to cover our social sins and failure in 
education. If we have good grounds for believing that 
"the growth of intelligent plasticity, in any given race, 
is associated with a disintegration of the instinctive plan, 
congenital adaptation being superseded by an accom- 
modation of a more individualistic type, to meet the 
needs of a more varied and complex environment,"^ 
and if "a suitable training long enough continued can 
to a certain extent derange the hereditary tendencies 
which we call instinctive, and create new ones,"^ 
heredity loses much of its necessity, and society, with 
its power to control environment, becomes responsible. 

Yielding to suggestion is closely allied to imitation, 
which is, of course, a fundamental racial instinct. The 
best and worst part of a child's education comes to him 
unconsciously. He acts out its suggestions before his 
judgment is mature enough to be critical. The writer 
found that only 24 of the Wisconsin Reformatory boys 
in question had read any books that were not harmful, 
and many of these were valueless. They were merely 

« Morgan, Nature, February 3, 1898. p. 328. 

2 Charles Letourncau, Popular Science Monthly, February, 1898. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 85 

not bad; 35 had read none at all; 29 all kinds, and 12 
said good books, but were unable to name any. INIost 
of the books belonged to the class of the James Boys, 
Diamond Dick, and detective stories. We seem not to 
be going too far if we assent to Ferona's assertion that 
" three-fourths of those who enter prison have been led 
to a life of crime from neglect of education." Moral 
ideas are rare among these reformatory boys, but there 
is no evidence of a prevailing absence of the moral sense. 
Few of them gloried in what they had done; 127 said 
that they would have preferred to spend their evenings 
in a free clubroom playing games, had there been such 
a place where they lived; 3 admitted they liked the 
saloon better, and 13 would rather have remained at 
home. When asked whether they would like to be such 
a man as their father, 138 replied yes, while 58 wanted 
to be better. 

The children of wage-earners in towns and cities, the 
class from which reformatories are constantly re- 
plenished, are, to a large extent, deprived of the stimu- 
lus of social respectability. Besides, they do not receive 
the same treatment as those socially higher. It is rare 
for any one who can win their admiration and arouse 
them to personal effort for improvement to associate 
with them, at least in any other than a patronizing way. 
No one took enough interest in 20 of the reformatory 
boys who drank to advise them to stop, while only 6 of 
the remaining 41 reported being urged not to drink by 
any one outside of their family; 54 had never seen or 
heard of any one whom they greatly admired. Of 
those who said that they had, 54 gave some member 
of their own family, 28 Washington, while 25 were 
scattered, and 42 were unable to name any one. 



86 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Almost all the boys had lived the greater part of the 
time on the street. They were under the influence of 
associates older in crime. 124 said they had never felt 
any desire to do wrong, but were led on by others and 
wanted some fun. Of the remaining 14 who replied, 1 1 
believed they alone were responsible for what they did, 
while 3 were not able to give an opinion. 

The importance of suggestion in mental and moral 
development is immense. In these children, environ- 
ment, by suggesting little good and much evil, is work- 
ing mental and moral ruin. Children unconsciously 
grow into the customs, modes of action, and thought of 
those among whom they live. The survival of the 
fittest plays its part in determining the nature of each 
little social group just as truly as in the larger society, 
and here, as elsewhere, the "fittest" is he who meets 
the needs that confront him. The boy who lives among 
those who lie and steal is a little social outcast if he does 
not do the same. Here the natural race tendencies are 
reenforced by social necessity. He may survive in 
the sense of continuing to live, but he will not survive 
in the sense of being "somebody," if he do not adapt 
himself to the habits that pass for the "thing to do" 
among his associates. Fortunately or unfortunately, 
the native instinct to imitate comes to the boy's aid, 
and he does these things without once raising the ques- 
tion of right or wrong. So social imitation, strength- 
ened by all the force of race instinct, becomes a power- 
ful factor in the production of juvenile crime. 

The effect of social suggestion in reforming boys is 
shown in the George Jimior Republic. "The most 
hopeful cases are the leaders of the gangs of toughs, the 
despair of the city police. Their crimes are more often 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 87 

the natural expression in their environment of the love 
of adventure and excitement. Given the avenues and 
ambitions of the Republic, and they become the ablest 
chiefs of police, lawyers, students, and workers." ^ " In 
the majority of cases those who now are of the highest 
character, were the most inveterate convicts during their 
early citizenship." 

This keen sensitiveness to suggestions offered by the 
environment is even more striking among primitive 
people, because with them the change is a racial inno- 
vation. The Maoris of New Zealand, who at the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth century were fierce cannibals, 
now send representatives to the New Zealand legisla- 
ture,^ and Benjamin Kidd says that "though they are 
slowly disappearing before the race of higher social ef- 
ficiency with which they have come into contact, they 
do not appear to show any intellectual incapacity for 
assimilating European ideas." ^ 

The same response to environment is also seen among 
the Navajoes of New Mexico, where fifteen thousand 
wealthy and prosperous people live together, "having 
few quarrels, no murders, and yet no courts of law, and 
no obvious punishments for breach of law."^ 

Man certainly seems to have latent possibilities which 
may become manifest under the stimulating influence 
of suggestive environment, but without it, may, perhaps, 
forever remain submerged. 

In the light of recent studies in suggestion it is impos- 
sible to say where the influence of heredity ends and 
that of social suggestion begins. Much that has been 

' John R. Commons, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. Ill, p. 439. 

2 Chamberlain: The Child, p. 297. 

^Social Evolution, p. 293. 

* Washington Matthews, Journal of American Folk-lore, Vol. XII, p. 3. 



88 MIND IN THE MAKING 

ascribed to heredity may be the resuh of social sugges- 
tion acquired through imitation. It is hard to rid our- 
selves of an idea that has long strongly influenced our 
thought. We have believed the juvenile criminal dif- 
ferent from other boys, and have thought to find the 
cause of this difference in his ancestry. If his parents 
or grand-parents showed criminal characteristics the 
tendency in the children has been thought to be ac- 
counted for; but this loses sight of an important fact 
which has been generally ignored in such discussions, 
and its recognition largely destroys the value of argu- 
ments based upon such investigations. Criininals con- 
stitute an environment of their own, and make that of 
their children. There had been an entire absence in 
the surroundings of the Wisconsin Reformatory boys 
of everything that could give them ideas of any other 
kind of life than the one they led, and suggestive im- 
itation, aided by race instincts, would account for their 
acts unaided by inherited family tendencies. If boys 
of good ancestry were placed in the early environment 
of these boys, it would be a miracle if nearly all did not 
become criminals. Dugdale's investigation of criminals 
convinced him, also, that "the tendency of heredity 
is to produce an environment which perpetuates 
heredity."^ Again, he says that "in the 'Jukes' it was 
shown that heredity depends upon the permanence of 
the environment, and that a change in the environment 
may produce an entire change in the career, which, in 
the course of greater or less length of time, according to 
varying circumstances, will produce an actual change in 
the character of the individual."^ 

1 The Jukes, p. 66. 
'^ Ibid., p. 113. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 89 

There can hardly be any doubt that there is a time 
in the hfe of every normal boy when primitive im- 
pulses, the reverberation of savage life, carry him on, 
with almost resistless fury, toward a life of crime. 
When to these native impulses there is joined an en- 
vironment favorable to crime, there can be little hope 
for successful resistance. 

There are conditions which may cause some to omit 
this period in their development. Boys put early into 
positions of responsibility may lose their boyhood and 
pass from childhood immediately to manhood. Par- 
ents sometimes so win the confidence of their children 
through companionship that nothing is done of which 
they are ignorant. They are the confidants of their 
sons, and a manly character is formed without the loss 
of those advantages that come with boyish sports. 
These cases are, however, comparatively rare. More 
commonly those who do not engage in such acts refrain 
through fear rather than from any high motive. Doing 
such things does not indicate a depraved nature. It 
rather shows an independent, active, aggressive char- 
acter which, rightly developed, leads to manly courage. 
I do not mean to say that all who engage in semi- 
criminal acts during boyhood will be valuable men in 
society. That depends upon the final turn which is 
given to the independent strength in them which the 
courage to do these things shows. Mental and moral 
development is the result of exceedingly complex proc- 
esses, and we are only beginning to learn some of the 
most evident elements in it. We know that native 
tendencies cannot be whipped out of boys, and that 
these impulses should be turned into other lines of 
activity which will satisfy the needs of boyish instincts, 



90 MIND IN THE MAKING 

without robbing the child of the desire to act and the 
resulting mental strength and elasticity. The problem 
is largely an individual one. The personal equation of 
boys plays too important a part in their development 
to make set rules possible, but in the great majority of 
cases the satisfying outlet for these instincts is through 
some form of interesting physical activity. Sheldon 
found* that out of 623 societies, formed by boys be- 
tween the ages of ten and seventeen, 86 per cent, in- 
volved this activity. Athletic clubs naturally led with 
61 per cent., and predatory societies of various sorts 
followed with 17 per cent., while industrial organiza- 
tions came third with 8} per cent. The curve for pred- 
atory organizations rises suddenly at ten years of age, 
and reaches its culmination a little later. 

The secret of creating in boys a feeling of social 
responsibility which shall lead to intelligent discrimina- 
tion in conduct, is not to be sought in talks on morals, 
but in the unconscious influence of the ideas and ac- 
tions with which they are surrounded, and in pure air, 
simple, wholesome food, and abundant exercise of a sort 
that appeals to the impulses of their stage of develop- 
ment. Responsibility should be put upon them — there 
is nothing to which boys so implicitly respond — and 
when the results thus secured are disappointing, the 
boys themselves should be taken into consultation re- 
garding the remedy. Partial responsibility, especially 
if associated with doubt or suspicion, always fails, but 
ingenuous co-operation wins responsive confidence. 

In recent years educational attitude toward mis- 
demeanors of boys has undergone marked change. 
Our Puritan forefathers settled the question very easily 

' American Journal of Psychology, Vol. IX, 1899, p. 425. 



CEIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 91 

by throwing the whole responsibility upon the devil, 
but if his Satanic majesty originated all of the nine 
hundred and fourteen faults which Kozle has found 
enumerated by various pedagogues, the ingenuity of 
the old gentleman is certainly enviable. But now, as 
though to leave him supreme in making children bad 
were yielding him too much authority, Dexter comes 
along and tells us that it is not the devil at all, but the 
weather/ Children become one hundred and four per 
cent, worse, he says, when the temperature, with humid 
air, is between eighty and ninety degrees, and three 
hundred per cent, worse when it is between ninety and 
one hundred. Fortunately, he does not tell us what 
would happen should the temperature rise above one 
hundred degrees. 

All the investigations of boys' sports show that the 
common factor is competition, which varies only in the 
form which it takes. In early childhood, as Gulick has 
said,^ this competition is individualistic, but later it 
takes the form of groups and gangs which operate 
against one another or against society. Sheldon^ also 
found the same competitive spirit in his study of 
2,284 children. Among boys, as we have seen, ath- 
letics led, interest in these sports culminating at about 
thirteen, and after that gradually lessening, while pred- 
atory societies, the next in number, reached their highest 
point a little earlier. 

It is evident that sports of the competitive sort are 
the civilized outlet for juvenile energy. The more 
primitive the games, the more they appeal to the basal 
phylogenetic impulses. Camping expeditions, and op- 

1 Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. V, p. 522. 

2 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LIII, 1898, p. 793. 

^ Americayi Journal of Psychology, Vol. IX, 1897-98, p. 425. 



92 MIND IN THE MAKING 

posing forces organized for strategical conflicts, always 
awaken keen enthusiasm, and it is through such sports 
that the racial craving of boys for a wild, daring life 
of adventure is satisfied without personal injury or 
social loss. But the advantage to the boys is not 
merely negative. Led by these physical activities into 
cooperative helpfulness, the indolent, not infrequently, 
show surprising interest in their school work. Their 
life is no longer separated into two sections, one for play 
and the other for so much drudgery as may be forced 
upon them; but, instead, it is now one continuous 
round of mutual activity, in which the part that each 
plays is essential to the whole. The sports demon- 
strate to the boys, unconsciously it is true, and for that 
reason more convincingly, that the teacher who par- 
ticipates is one of them; his work is theirs as their 
play is his. 

Reversion is along the line of least resistance. It is 
easy to fall back into a less intellectual and more in- 
stinctive life, to lose criteria of action acquired in 
recent ages. The stages through which the race has 
passed are strongly entrenched in the organic and 
psychic life, and for this reason their elimination is a 
slow process. "If for any reason, therefore, develop- 
ment is arrested at a point corresponding to one of these 
lower stages, the qualities characterizing the latter will 
persist."^ This is what happened to the boys in the 
reformatory. 

Morality is a habit long before it is a matter of prin- 
ciple. Because of his greater dependence on the good- 
will of his associates, the child, even more than the 
adult, must accommodate himself to his surroundings; 

• Dawson, American Journal of Psychology, Vol. II. p. 189. 



CRIMINAL TENDENCIES OF BOYS 93 

he must adapt himself to the social environment in 
which he lives. He has not the developed will which 
will enable him to act independently of his surround- 
ings. We act according to the content of conscious- 
ness, and that content in children, inhibitions being to 
a large extent unformed, is mainly made up of objective 
social relationships present at the time. 

It is a fundamental law of mental no less than of phys- 
ical growth that the new tends to conform to the old. 
Nervous impulses stimulated by new experiences follow 
the pathways of those older, more firmly fixed impulses 
to which the new most readily adapts itself. Now, 
there are no pathways so deeply impressed in the or- 
ganism as those of race instincts. It is because of this 
that semi-criminal acts fill so large a part of boy-life. 
New experiences follow the old instinctive race paths, 
and they will continue to do this for the accomplish- 
ment of the same race purpose, though the purpose may 
no longer be serviceable, unless some other interest be 
found in the realization of which this nerve energy may 
be absorbed, without being required immediately to 
leave its old line of discharge. This is not so much a 
substitution^ of one process for another, as it is the 
substitution of a new purpose for the old one in the 
same process. It is a recognition of the right of race 
instincts to exist. Instead of antagonizing them, we 
use them in developing the child. This puts meaning 
into the expression, so often heard but so little under- 
stood, that we should lead children instead of driving 
them. 

It was belief in the values of childhood's trends 
visioned by a poet's intuition, in advance of knowledge 

' Baldwin: Menial Development, p. 257. 



94 MIND IN THE MAKING 

lately gained, that led Wordsworth to plead for a race of 
boys like those with whom he "herded," 

A race of real children; not too wise, 

Too learned, or too good; but wanton, fresh, 

And bandied up and down by love and hate; 

Not unresentful where self-justified; 

Fierce, moody, patient, venturous, modest, shy; 

Mad at their sports like withered leaves in winds; 

Though doing wrong and suffering, and full oft 

Bending beneath our life's mysterious weight 

Of pain, and doubt, and fear, yet yielding not 

In happiness to the happiest upon earth.' 

' The Prelude, Complete Poetical Works, p. 268. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 

It was not very long ago, as history measures time, 
that a Suabian schoolmaster pointed with pride to the 
results of his fifty-one years of teaching. He had given 
"911,500 canings, 121,000 floggings, 209,000 custodes, 
136,000 tips with the ruler, 10,200 boxes on the ear, and 
22,700 tasks by heart." It was also recorded to his 
credit that "he had made 700 boys stand on peas, 
6,000 on a sharp edge of wood, 5,000 wear the fool's 
cap, and 1,700 hold the rod." * Our early school- 
masters were certainly not troubled with philosophic 
doubts about the action of matter upon mind, what- 
ever ideas they may have had regarding the mind's 
reaction. 

"Students," said Crabbe's schoolmaster, 

like horses on the road, 
Must be well lash'd before they take the load; 
They may be willing for a time to run, 
But you must whip them ere the work be done; 
To tell a boy, that if he will improve, 
His friends will praise him, and his parents love, 
Is doing nothing — he has not a doubt 
But they will love him, nay, applaud without; 
Let no fond sire a boy's ambition trust, 
To make him study, let him see he must.' 

' Barnard's English Pedagogy, Second Series, p. 327. 
« Ibid., p. 328. 

95 



96 MIND IN THE MAKING 

But mental ills that had already broken out by no 
means exhausted the therapeutical efficacy of the rod; 
its generous application was also regarded as a kind of 
antidote for threatening physical aspirations. So we 
find the good Colet, Dean of St, Paul's, ordering a 
gentle boy of ten to be flogged, not because he deserved 
it, as he remarked to Erasmus who was present, but 
because "it was fit to humble him." Erasmus' own 
teacher was very proud of him, but being a conscientious 
man he did not wish his affection to deprive the boy of 
the benefit of the stimulus approved by the best peda- 
gogy, and so he flogged him just to see how he could 
bear the pain.* 

To-day we are passing through a transitional period. 
Flogging's sceptre no longer brings the small boy to 
his knees in reverence, though there are those who are 
sure that, so far as being "shaped" is concerned, the 
boy has been the loser at both "ends," by thus handi- 
capping Destiny. However that may be, school flog- 
ging, like many other social customs, has had its day, 
and passed. Its popularity was due to a mistaken idea 
of the nature of sin, and to failure to understand the 
part that racial instincts play in the life of boys. These 
were pardonable errors one hundred years ago, because 
the body of knowledge upon which the newer view 
rests had not yet been gathered and worked out. The 
favor that whipping finds to-day rests on the tendency 
to follow lines of least resistance, a psychical no less 
than a physical principle. It is very easy to force a 
semblance of obedience and attention to work. That 
is a mere matter of superior strength, real or imagined. 
But to create a desire for work — that is quite a different 

« Ibid., p. 328. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 97 

problem. And then the desire to rule, to govern, to 
sit in judgment over others, is a racial instinct whose 
birth antedates man. We condemn it only when we 
are its victims, and deny its right to exist in chil- 
dren under any circumstances, yet delight to exercise 
authority over them, though our sole justification 
may be that we have lived longer — and made more 
mistakes. 

In earlier days the strongest boy in the school had 
to be whipped before he and his friends would consent 
to be instructed, and I am not sure but they were wiser, 
in their unconscious way, than the children of light. 
They recognized force as a constituent element of 
school regime, and accepted the gauntlet of war. Ac- 
commodation by their teachers to this unsound prin- 
ciple of compulsion marked their unfitness. By and 
by a teacher came into the school who started a fire 
with the whips while the larger boys looked on in 
amazement, wondering whether the end of the world 
was at hand, and unwilling to do anything lest their 
action might precipitate the catastrophe. Boys and 
girls react in much the same terms as are expressed by 
one's action toward them. 

There is a delightful little book by William Hawley 
Smith, The Evolution of Dodd. If you have chanced to 
read it you will remember how INIiss Stone, the village 
teacher, ran through all the precepts and maxims that 
she had committed to memory during her pedagogical 
training, to see which one would apply to Dodd as he 
entered the school-room one morning, and walked up to 
her desk with the dignity that only six-year-olds can 
assume. He scraped a huge piece of black loam off his 
left boot with the toe of his right, just by way of va- 



98 MIND IN THE MAKING 

riety, and rubbed it into the floor with his heel. You 
recall the tortured existence of the teachers. One 
after another came, but not to stay. Dodd was the one 
case that pedagogical precepts seemed not to have 
taken into account. One day eighteen-year-old Amy 
Kelly was engaged. She had not had the experience 
which is sometimes thought to have such magical effect 
in telling its possessor what to do, but which, unfortu- 
nately, lends itself quite as readily to old-fogyism, even 
in those whose youth might lead us to look for better 
things. So perhaps it was well that she was without 
experience. Many of the desks were smeared with 
tallow, "patches of grease that told of debating soci- 
eties, singing schools, and revival meetings of the pre- 
vious winter. . . . The stove pipe had parted and 
hung trembling from the ceiling, while the small black- 
board in the corner was scrawled all over with rude 
and indecent figures." This was too much for one 
without experience, and so she righted the stove pipe, 
built a cheerful fire, went to a neighbor's for a scrub- 
bing brush, and began to scrub. It was just at this 
moment that the irrepressible Dodd appeared, looking 
with astonishment upon this unusual scene. He stood 
in the doorway, apparently uncertain whether this was 
a school, but when Miss Kelly started for the pump to 
get a pail of clean water, it was too much for him, so 
he seized the pail, and carried it for her, filling it at 
the pump. "I hardly think you can carry the pail so 
full; . . . better let me help you," she said, taking 
hold of one side. "There, so, now we'll carry it to- 
gether," and, one on either side of the bucket, they went 
into the house again. But we need not go farther 
with the story. You know the rest. If any boy tried 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 99 

after that to make trouble for Miss Kelly, he had to 
settle after school with Dodd. 

Transitional periods at best are very perplexing. No 
one feels quite sure of his ground, nor does he know 
just what to do in an emergency. Fortunately, per- 
haps, the same uncertainty prevails in the minds of 
those to whom the change has given additional freedom; 
only in the latter case it takes the form of testing the 
limits of the newly acquired liberty. Extreme reform 
always ushers in unwonted power. So the efforts of 
school boys to find out just what the abolition of cor- 
poral punishment means, to trace the boundaries of 
their new possibilities, to see how far they may go with- 
out reaching the jumping-off place, need not surprise 
us. Naturally these excursions of discovery keep the 
teacher's mind in a more or less chaotic state. If she 
could only make use of the time-honored birch rod, 
she could very soon demonstrate to them the confines 
of the new freedom. And so we find the teachers in 
some of the schools in which corporal punishment has 
been prohibited, petitioning for a return to the good 
old ways, and one of the Boston papers, in a recent 
issue, pleads for the reinstatement of "judicious pun- 
ishment." 

Age has so long thought itself identical with wisdom 
that we cannot, at times, help wondering why its scin- 
tillations fail to dazzle the eyes of youth, yet strangely 
enough the gratitude that some eminent men express 
in their maturity is not for the instruction that they 
received in school, but for the freedom from restraint 
enjoyed. " Of my earliest days at school," says Words- 
worth, "I have little to say; but that they were very 
happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, then 

t«rc 



100 MIND IN THE MAKING 

and in vacations, to read whatever books I liked." * 
In the university he read voraciously, but only such 
books as he was naturally drawn to. Absolutely no 
attention was paid to the prescribed course of study.^ 
Sir Humphrey Davy, also, wrote to his mother, "I 
consider it fortunate that I was left much to myself 
when a child, and put upon no particular plan of study, 
and that I enjoyed much idleness at Mr. Coryton's 
school. I perhaps owe to these circumstances the little 
talents that I have and their peculiar application." ^ 
"The regular course of studies," wrote Emerson, "the 
years of academical and professional education, have 
not yielded me better facts than some idle books under 
the bench at the Latin school." * "The best teacher 
of English branches I have ever known," says Andrew 
D. White, "had no rule and no system; or, rather, his 
rule was to have no rules, and his system was to have 
no system." ^ This is not very complimentary, surely, 
to the elaborate methods of teaching English about 
which we hear so much to-day. Nor is Edward 
Everett Hale more comforting. "I have always been 
glad," he has said, "that I was sent where I was — to a 
school without any machinery, very much on the go-as- 
you-please principle, and where there was no strain 
put upon the pupil." ^ And again he says, "My father 
was one of the best teachers I ever knew. ... I owe 
it to him that for these three or four years, when I really 
had nothing to do but to grow physically, I was placed 
with a simple, foolish man for a teacher, and not with 

* Autobiographical Memoranda, Grosart's Edition, Vol. Ill, p. 220. 

* Legouis' Early Life of William Wordsworth, p. 84, 
3 Humphrey Davy, by J. E. Sharpe, p. 13. 

* Spiritual Laws, Essays, First Series, p. 97. 
' Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 8. 

'' A New England Boyhood, p. 24. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 101 

one of the drivers, who had plans and would want to 
make much of us." ^ Perhaps his teacher was not so 
foolish after all. The most successful teachers are 
those whose method grows out of the nature of the 
children with whom they are associated, instead of 
being manufactured in the principal's office, and handed 
over to the teachers, like any other package of mer- 
chandise. Such teachers seem to have no method, so 
nicely is it adjusted to varying personalities. 

When one looks over the boyhood days of men who 
afterward became eminent, he is impressed with the 
number who, according to all the principles of peda- 
gogical Nestors, ought to have been intellectually 
ruined, for they have left undone those things which 
they ought to have done, and have done those things 
which they ought not to havv done; and there was 
remarkable health in them. James Russell Lowell has 
told us, in one of his letters,^ that he chose what reading 
he pleased and what friends he pleased, sometimes 
scholars and sometimes not. Lowell's seeming idle- 
ness greatly pained his relatives. His one fault, they 
said, was indolence and negligence.^ The naivete of 
Henry Ward Beecher's teacher, Mr. Langdon, is seen 
in a letter written to Henry's parents at about the time 
when, according to Mrs. Stowe, her brother's studies 
were mostly in the forest with gun on his shoulder. 
"Whence returning unprepared for school, he would be 
driven to the expedient of writing out his Latin verb 
and surreptitiously reading it out of the crown of his 
hat." "Henry's observance of my regulations relating 
to study has become exact and punctual," wrote Mr. 

' A New England Boyhood, p. 27. 

'■' Scudder's Life of Lowell, Vol. I, p. 53. 

3 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 52. 



102 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Langdon. "His diligence all along has gradually in- 
creased, and I think he has arrived at that full purpose 
which will insure his making a scholar. My method 
of instruction for beginners is a system of extended, 
minute, and reiterated drilling, and the make of his 
mind is such as fits him to receive benefit from the 
operation." * So well fitted for this kind of work was 
his mind that after a year "it began to be perceived by 
the elders of the family that as to the outward and 
visible signs of learning he was making no progress." ^ 
In speaking of Shelley, Dowden thinks that "perhaps 
his most important studies at Eton were those of his 
own choice, and not of compulsion."^ "Napoleon 
studied diligently those branches he liked, the others he 
neglected." * Scott's reading, in his boyhood, was 
wholly undirected and unregulated,^ and, later, in the 
university, when he was supposed to be absorbing legal 
opinions, he gave much time to books of "a most mis- 
cellaneous kind, reading them in his own way, which 
often consisted in beginning at the middle or end of a 
volume,"^ and skimming it with a " hop-step-and- 
jump." Tested by the standards of school and college, 
Robert Browning had little education. His knowledge 
was of the sort not purchasable at universities. "In 
the atmosphere in which he lived, learning was a 
pleasure, and a natural pleasure, like sport or wine." ^ 
At Cambridge, Coleridge was interested in almost 
everything except his studies, to which he gave at best 

' Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, by Wm. C. Beecher and Samuel 
Scoville, p. 74. 
s Ibid. 

' Quoted in William Sharp's Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 35. 
* Thomas E. Watson's Napoleon, p. 26. 
5 Charles D. Yonge's Life of Sir Wnller Scott, p. 32. 
« Ibid., p. 14. 
' G. K. Chesterton's Robert Browning, p. 13. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 103 

only desultory and intermittent attention; but it was 
in his room that those gathered who were alive to the 
questions of the day, or interested in poetry, philosophy, 
or religion.^ 

To be guided in elementary education by the prompt- 
ings of the very natures that are to be trained, sounds 
quite illogical to the adult mind accustomed to look 
with complacent adulation upon its own deliverances. 
We are still greatly, even if unconsciously, influenced 
by the old idea that the nature of children is intrinsically 
bad. They must be made over, remodeled on a better 
pattern — the adult pattern — with large parts of them 
left out. And so we set up a psychical operating-table 
in every schoolroom, and proceed to cut each child ac- 
cording to our measure, forgetful of our own deficiencies, 
lopping off one individual trait after another, until we 
have made him commonplace enough to fit into the 
traditional pedagogical mould. 

Where had we been, we two, beloved Friend I 

Wordsworth exclaims to Coleridge — 

If in the season of unperilous choice. 

In heu of wandering, as we did, through vales 

Rich with indigenous produce, open ground 

Of Fancy, happy pastures ranged at will. 

We had been followed, hourly watched, and noosed, 

Each in his several melancholy walk 

Stringed like a poor man's heifer at its feed. 

Led through the lanes in forlorn servitude; 

Or rather like a stalled ox debarred 

From touch of growing grass, that may not taste 

A flower till it have yielded up its sweets 

A prelibation to the mower's scythe.^ 

i 

• Hall Caine's Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 28. 

^The Prelude, Complete Poetical Works (Grosart's Edition), p. 266. 



104 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Variability is a fundamental biological principle. 
Without it there is no selection, for the simple reason 
that there is nothing from which to select. Conformity 
to a mean reduces all to common mediocrity. Im- 
provement posits variation and this is just the quality 
that finds least favor in our schools to-day. Individ- 
uality may not receive quite the same treatment that 
it did from Dr. Parr of the Norwich school, who, when 
informed by one of his teachers that a certain pupil 
seemed to be showing signs of genius, exclaimed, "Say 
you so ? Then begin to flog him to-morrow morning" ; ^ 
but it causes hardly less commotion in the orthodox 
pedagogical breast. Non-conformists are always hard 
to dispose of. In school they are particularly objection- 
able because they do not easily fit into a system. We 
arrange pupils under a few general types, and those who 
do not conform to our classification we call lazy, or 
dull, or bad; but these are only names to indicate 
certain deviations from the convenient standard of the 
school, and have no necessary validity beyond its walls. 
How fortunate this is becomes evident when we recall 
that Koezle counted more than nine hundred faults of 
children enumerated by various school-teachers. Judged 
by the quantity of output the school classification is cer- 
tainly marvellous, but one cannot help wondering if the 
sensitiveness that enables the system to register mis- 
demeanors with such remarkable accuracy is not, after 
all, the chief reason why so few children fit into it with- 
out squirming. It gives a very comfortable feeling to 
assert the supreme beneficence of the system, and to feel 
compassion for the boys who were not made right; but 
this complacency is often badly jarred by the incon- 

» Barnard's English Pedagogy, p. 330. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 105 

siderate way in which some have treated the school rule 
for determining mental efficiency, for, according to the 
rule, so many eminent men should have turned out 
worthless dolts. John Ruskin, who engaged in original 
composition from seven years of age, and who at ten 
presented his father with an original play of no little 
merit, at sixteen was characterized by his teachers as 
" shaky " in scholarship, and a little later entered Oxford 
as a "gentleman-commoner," because it was regarded 
as doubtful whether he could pass the examinations/ 

It was not until he was sent to Patrick Hughes' 
school that Oliver Goldsmith,^ a stupid blockhead in 
another school, found a teacher who could discern be- 
neath the external crust of stupidity the dormant power 
of intellect. 

At Harrow, Byron, the butt of the class at another 
school, because he could not learn the lessons put alike 
before all, regardless of individual tendencies, first found 
a teacher who understood him. "He has talents, my 
lord," ^ he remarked to Byron's guardian. "Indeed!" 
was the reply in a tone of doubtful surprise. "I soon 
found," said this same teacher. Dr. Drury, "that a wild 
mountain colt had been committed to my care. But 
there was mind in his eye. His manner and temper 
soon convinced me that he might be led by a silken 
string to a point, rather than by a cable, — on that prin- 
ciple I acted." * 

Not one of John Hunter's teachers detected his ab- 
sorbing interest in nature's world. They merely called 
him lazy. 

1 Frederic Harrison's John Ruskin, p. 16. 

2 Austin Dobson's Life of Oliver Goldsmith, p. 17. 

3 Roden Noel's Life of Byron, pp. 38-39. 

4 Ibid., p. 40. 



106 MIND IN THE MAKING 

To find out how students to-day feel regarding the 
school's attitude toward them, a few questions were 
asked of the older students in five normal schools, each 
in a different State. One hundred and seventy out of 
453 said that their teachers did not help them find out 
their strong and weak points, and only 115 said un- 
reservedly that they did. Of the rest some thought that 
one or two teachers aided them. In many cases this 
seems to have been in the subjects that the teachers 
themselves especially liked. Ninety-five said that their 
teachers tried to find out what their ideals were, and 
appealed to them, while 239 replied that no interest was 
taken in them individually. The others, again, said 
that in a few instances the teacher's personal influence 
was felt. 

In a large proportion of cases the school seems to 
have exerted little or no influence except through the 
medium of the recitation. While there are, unquestion- 
ably, many exceptions, teachers are prone to stand apart 
from their pupils, conducting the recitation well, per- 
haps, but as something wholly external to themselves 
and their students. Throughout there is lack of the 
personal element. Most of those who thought that they 
had been helped outside of their classes, felt that the 
chief benefit after all came from their schoolmates. The 
pedagogue is too much inclined to assume an attitude 
of superior indifference to life. Latin, mathematics, 
grammar, and geography, he seems to think, ought to 
develop children's ability and so fit them to meet life's 
problems. If they do not, why, then there is something 
the matter with the boy. 

It is curious that everything which enters the school- 
room at once becomes rigid. The method of the recita- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 107 

tion has been elevated into a fetich before whose image 
individuahty yields to unbecoming humility. The 
belief that there is one road to knowledge is fundament- 
ally wrong. There are as many ways of getting ideas 
as there are individuals. No one has a monopoly on 
the manner in which children arrive at the number 
concept, though some have tried to patent the process. 
Mental flexibility is essential to intellectual growth, and 
ability to adapt oneself to the innumerable ways in 
which mind matures marks the born teacher. Posses- 
sion of this power explains the success of some with 
little education, and its absence makes useless in the 
class-room the profound knowledge of the specialist. 
It was Turgot, I think, who once said that "the first 
thing for a philosopher to do is to get a system of phi- 
losophy, and the second thing for him to do is to discard 
it." This is eminently true of method. Methods 
serve him only who has risen above them. To be 
bound to one is intellectual slavery. One cannot work 
continuously in the same grooves without becoming 
fossilized. The mere breaking away from habit re- 
juvenates the mind. Uniformity, in teachers and pupils 
alike, arrests mental processes and tends to dullness. 
Change, variation, is the very condition of conscious- 
ness. 

Freedom from routine and formality seems to have 
characterized the teachers who impressed themselves 
upon those whose subsequent eminence has enabled us 
to learn of their boyhood days. Dr. Hutcheson, to 
whom Adam Smith felt so deeply indebted, was a de- 
cided radical.* It was he who first broke away, at 
Glasgow, from the almost sacred tradition of lecturing 

' Francis W. Hirst's Adam Smith, p. 5. 



108 MIND IN THE MAKING 

in Latin. He worked with his students, ridding them 
of antiquated behefs by first hberating his own mind, 
and he continually stimulated them to do something a 
little better than they had thus far done, by suggesting 
possible lines of study and thought. 

He is a fortunate man who, from the kindergarten 
through the university, has had more than one or two 
real teachers. Abundant knowledge and good char- 
acter, together with logical clearness in exposition, are 
commonly thought sufficient; yet the failure of teachers 
possessed of all these qualities to attract and inspire 
the boys and girls who later became eminent men and 
women is a fact the significance of which cannot be 
ignored. The right of children to their own individual 
natures is grudgingly accorded the same approval that 
Edward Everett Hale, when a boy, gave to the schools. 
He looked upon the whole arrangement as "one of 
those necessary nuisances which society imposes on the 
individual, and which the individual would be foolish 
if he quarreled with, when he did not have it in his 
power to abolish it." ^ 

The dominant sin of the schoolmaster is the attempt 
to make children homogeneous. Nature does not do 
things in that way; she makes each thing different 
from everything else, as though to try her power, revel- 
ling in the fruit of her creation. The teacher's work 
is to take Nature's product, and help her complete it, 
instead of lamenting her want of wisdom, for subse- 
quent events often prove that she clearly divined the 
future. The educator's contribution is to bring Na- 
ture's design to the highest attainable perfection, so that 
the final product may serve the purpose for which its 

' A New England Boyhood, p. 24. 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 109 

own peculiar characteristics best fitted it. The question 
whether it was inevitable that boys whose ability was 
demonstrated by their subsequent achievements should 
dislike their school work is a very pertinent one. Ful- 
ton, Newton, William H. Seward, Richard Sheridan, 
Heine, Joseph Banks, Sir Walter Scott, John Hunter, 
Lyell, Pasteur, Shelley, Herbert Spencer, Patrick Henry, 
Emerson, and Thackeray are a formidable group. Was 
Henry Ward Beecher's prospect of intellectual salvation 
improved by conditions that led him, in after-life, to say 
that he did not have a single pleasant recollection of his 
school-days ? His teachers seem not to have given 
him even the negative cause for gratitude for which 
Wordsworth and Sir Humphrey Davy gave thanks^ 
that they left them alone. It is a suggestive commen- 
tary upon teaching that schoolboys many times recog- 
nize ability in an associate where the teacher has missed 
it. Native tendencies have never counted for much in 
the schools. Principals and superintendents can make 
better ones to order in the office. 

To meet the needs of children a teacher must be 
able to read the impulses of their minds. Herbert 
Spencer's dislike for school was largely due to his aver- 
sion to rote learning and his hatred of the dogmatic 
form of presentation. "The mere authoritative state- 
ment," he says, "that so-and-so is so-and-so, made 
without evidence or intelligible reason, seems to have 
been from the outset constitutionally repugnant to 
me." ^ So deeply rooted was this feeling that he was 
unwilling to study the rules of Latin grammar. 

I am aware of the inestimable training thought to be 
gained from doing unpleasant things — at least when 

' Autobiography, Vol. I, p. 95. 



110 MIND IN THE MAKING 

others do them — but the argument has been a Httle 
overworked. With given content of subject matter, 
intensity of effort counts most for intellectual develop- 
ment, and it will hardly be denied that this is greatest 
when pleasure in the work is keenest. Friction always 
loses- energy. To say that the mind gains more strength 
from disagreeable occupations than from pleasant ones 
is a little like the contention of surgeons of earlier days 
that anaesthetics should not be used because the shock 
of the operation was beneficial to the patient. What- 
ever benefit there may be in doing unpleasant things is 
moral rather than intellectual, and surely there are oc- 
casions enough when children must be required to do 
things that they do not enjoy without trying to find 
extra ones. It may even be questioned whether the 
disagreeable element adds to its moral value. Does 
the boy who is dragged to the field and guarded while 
he hoes the weeds, and waters the corn with his tears, 
acquire better habits of industry than the one who, 
vying with his father to see who can cover the most 
ground, forgets the ball game that he left ? Dr. Adams, 
the first teacher who- understood Scott, used to invite 
his scholars to attempt poetical versions of passages 
from Horace and Virgil, but never made them tasks. 
And, strangely enough, he obtained results. 

After all, the best part of our education is gained in 
seemingly incidental ways. The human mind rather 
resents the instructing attitude and, though children 
adapt themselves more easily than adults, still, even 
with them, the suggestive method is more effective. 
Edward Everett Hale, speaking of his boyhood days, 
said: "At the moment I had no idea that any science 
was being expended on our training. I supposed that 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 111 

I was left to the great American proverb — *Go as you 
please.' But I have seen since that the hands were 
strong which directed this gay team of youngsters, 
though there was no stimukis we knew of, and though 
the touch was velvet. An illustration of this was in 
that wisdom of my father in sending me for four years 
to school to a simpleton."^ Much of the intellectual 
stimulus that inspired Alexander von Humboldt seems 
also to have been acquired in casual conversations, and 
in listening to lectures that partook more of the nature 
of interesting talks than of the formality of instruction. 
The morning hours given to walks in the garden with 
Moses Mendelssohn, the friendly intercourse with David 
Friedlander and Engel, and the informal lectures on 
physics and philosophy given in his mother's house by 
the Jewish physician, Marcus Herz, which led later to 
intimate friendship and association, indicate the method. 
So potent is suggestion with children that the mind 
cannot resist its touch unless aroused in opposition. 

Such was the tenor of the second act 
In this new hfe, 

says Wordsworth, speaking of his seemingly idle college 
days at Cambridge, amid the haunts of earlier men of 
fame. 

Imagination slept, 

And yet not utterly. I could not print 

Ground where the grass had yielded to the steps 

Of generations of illustrious men, 

Unmoved. I could not always lightly pass 

Through the same gateways, sleep where they had slept, 

Wake where they had waked, range that enclosure old, 

That garden of great intellects, undisturbed.' 

' A New England Boyhood, p. 61. 

' The Prelude, Complete Poetical Works, p. 252. 



112 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Wordsworth was a victim of the coercion-drudgery 
theory, the sanctuary of educators who cannot inspire. 
Anyone can drive, but few are capable of leading. The 
time to- give information is when it is asked for. That 
is the psychological moment, and the teacher who can- 
not create the desire for knowledge should speculate in 
other futures than those of human beings. The school 
may not be able to make poets or scientists or philoso- 
phers, but it can certainly spoil them. 

It is a very trite remark that if education is to be 
effective the child must react upon it, but in this state- 
ment there is always an implicit assumption that re- 
action is of one sort. Education suffers from the dis- 
ease with which thinking is commonly afflicted, only it 
has it in a little worse form. We incline to think in 
formulae, and having once found the magic words, our 
pedagogical soul feels the peace "which passeth all 
understanding." What a curious position "interest" 
holds to-day in pedagogy! — a kind of artificial attach- 
ment to a disagreeable piece of work by which it is 
thought to beguile unsuspecting urchins into the belief 
that it is fun! But, after all, what a difference there is 
between the real thing as you find it among the boys 
themselves and the pedagogically made article, so me- 
chanical that the children can see the wheels go round. 
What makes the difference ? Is it in the nature of the 
activity ? Are some things intrinsically interesting and 
others tedious, and is that all there is to be said about 
it? It would be pleasant to answer this question in 
the affirmative, since we should then be relieved of a 
heavy responsibility, and our past failures would be 
condoned; but, unfortunately, the facts are against us. 
Just those things that are drudgery in the school-room 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 113 

become play on Saturday. Take the most fascinating 
sport in which boys indulge, cave-digging; how long do 
you think their enjoyment of it would last if it were in- 
troduced into the school curriculum ? You would soon 
experience the absurdity of listening to wearisome plati- 
tudes from method-loving pedagogues on the art of 
awakening interest in the construction of caves. It 
would all be reduced to rules — the method of the recita- 
tion — with prolegomena on the preparation of the chil- 
dren for their lesson, and an extended argument to 
prove that it must not be expected that boys will find 
pleasure in the work, but some painful drudgery is neces- 
sary by way of preparation for the agonies of life. 

Now this does not mean that school work should be 
made easy. Pleasant and easy are by no means sy- 
nonymous. The houses that children build, the caves 
that they dig, the mysterious and secret alphabets that 
they invent, and by means of which they carry on cor- 
respondence with one another about war measures 
against the enemy, are not easy, but they are pleasant. 
The writer once knew a group of half a dozen boys 
who invented an alphabet the intricacies of which 
would have brought the blush of shame to the cheeks of 
the Phoenicians who devised our own, were difficulty in 
acquisition the issue; and yet they spent their Saturdays 
editing a paper printed in those marvellous hieroglyph- 
ics. Suppose this alphabet had been introduced into 
the school, and the boys had been reproved or kept 
after school for not mastering it. Much of the work 
that children call play is just as hard as any that is 
given them in the school-room. The attitude of the 
teacher makes the difference. Primitive man did not 
distinguish between work and play, and children do 



114 MIND IN THE MAKING 

not until the distinction is forced upon them. Ortho- 
dox pedagogy, under the spell of the mysterious efficacy 
of severe mental strain, wants to make everything con- 
scious, unmindful of the fact that many times the learn- 
ing processes are most effective when there is no con- 
scious effort. Every little while children must be 
mentally eviscerated, in order that the degree of mental 
digestion may be observed and a percentage value 
given. This is thought to hold the pupils to a higher 
standard of work; but, on the other hand, the human 
mind, fortunately^ perhaps, adapts itself with remark- 
able facility to continued misfortune, and settles down 
into indifferent acquiescence. 

The assertion that the cases which have been cited 
are exceptional, and for that reason without evidential 
value, is not sufficient; for, first, it is clear that the 
teachers did not recognize them as exceptional; {. e., 
did not understand them, but, instead, regarded these 
boys as commonplace; second, the claim that they are 
exceptional is an admission of the unrecognized right 
of individual differences to a fundamental place in ed- 
ucation, and this is the position of the writer. 

Forced attention accomplishes little. Intellectual 
effort is most effective when it springs from an irresisti- 
ble impulse in the individual to do the thing, and that 
impulse can never be stirred by external constraint or 
restraint. The effective line of approach to children 
is through their racial instincts and individual disposi- 
tions. These are their vulnerable points, easily taken 
without loss to either side, and, when once communica- 
tion is opened, it is astounding how many native ten- 
dencies may be made allies in promoting intellectual 
and moral growth. It is against those who are in- 



THE SCHOOL AND THE INDIVIDUAL 115 

different to these instinctive tendencies of childhood 
and youth that Wordsworth hurls his scorn — 

Those mighty workmen of our later age, 

Who, with a broad highway, have overbridged 

The froward chaos of futurity. 

Tamed to their bidding; they who have the skill 

To manage books, and things, and make them act 

On infant minds as surely as the sun 

Deals with a flower; the keepers of our time, 

The guides and wardens of our faculties, 

Sages who in their prescience would control 

All accidents, and to the very road 

Which they have fashioned would confine us down, 

Like engines; when will their presumption learn, 

That in the unreasoning progress of the world 

A wiser spirit is at work for us, 

A better eye than theirs, most prodigal 

Of blessings, and most studious of our good. 

Even in what seems our most unfruitful hours.' 

> Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works, The Prelude, p. 267. 



CHAPTER IV 

REFLEX NEUROSES AND THEIR RELATION TO 
DEVELOPMENT 

We have seen how httle attention has been given to 
the individuahty of children and youths under organ- 
ized systems of education. The preceding chapters 
have deah with racial and mental tendencies. There 
are, however, conditions under which the natural men- 
tal trend may be disturbed or perverted by nervous 
irritants, and of these education should also take ac- 
count. 

A few year's ago the writer's attention was called to 
a girl of about fifteen years, who, when reading, in- 
serted words which were not in the text and omitted 
others that were there. On being questioned, she said 
that she was not aware that she made such mistakes, 
yet, on re-reading the passage, words were again in- 
serted, though not always the same. 

A belief that the difficulty was physical rather than 
mental, led to an examination by an oculist. It was 
then found that the external muscle of the left eye was 
so much stronger than the internal, that, as soon as 
she fixed both eyes on a word, this eye was pulled out 
of range, though she was not aware of it. Through 
long experience with this defect the girl had uncon- 
sciously acquired the habit of ignoring the object seen 
f 116 



REFLEX NEUROSES 117 

with the left eye, but at times she would confuse the 
two objects and give her attention to this one instead 
of the other. Such was the case when, in reading, she 
inserted words that were not in the passage. She saw 
them with her left eye on another part of the page. 
This girl was already a neurasthenic, and the derange- 
ment of her nerve centres was, without doubt, largely 
due to the strain resulting from this muscular defect. 
Previous to this, her teachers had thought her hesitating 
manner and mistakes due to mental incapacity. 

The school age is the nascent period of the nervous 
system. Most of its paths have already been formed, 
others probably have not yet become functionally ac- 
tive, but none of them are definitely fixed. Even in 
those structures whose organization is complete, the 
nervous elements have not yet grown accustomed to 
facile response. Many have not yet acquired the 
habit of functioning economically toward a definite 
end. Energy is needed for the completion of cerebral 
organization, and any waste of nervous force may 
seriously interfere with structural growth and the estab- 
lishment of normal function. Exactly this happens 
when organs, because of structural defect or disease, 
fail to contribute their share toward the conservation 
of the nutritive tone of the nervous system, the main- 
tenance of which is aided in no slight measure by or- 
ganic and peripheral impulses that are too weak to rise 
above the level of consciousness. A diseased organ can 
send out only diseased impulses, which are a continual 
source of irritation to nerve centres, and which, if al- 
lowed to continue, finally bring about such a derange- 
ment of function as to give the appearance of real nervous 
or organic affection. Yet careful observation will often 



118 MIND IN THE MAKING 

show that the cause of the trouble does not lie in the 
nervous system nor in the organ that seems to be dis- 
eased, but in some other organ that conceals its re- 
sponsibility by reflecting its disorder through sensory 
and motor nerves. 

One of the most frequent sources of these reflex neu- 
roses is the eyes. Through the kindness of some phy- 
sicians/ I am permitted to draw a few illustrations 
from their practice. 

Case 1. — Girl, age sixteen years. Parentage, American; sur- 
roundings, good. Exceedingly nervous; terrors by day and night; 
insomnia and indigestion with palpitation of the heart. Con- 
sulted an oculist and the symptoms were relieved by the correc- 
tion of the ocular error of refraction. 

Case 2. — -Girl, age eighteen years. Parentage, German; symp- 
toms, intense headaches and vertigo; gaseous indigestion and gen- 
eral nervousness. Examination showed that her eyes were very 
uneven in visual acuity. With the proper correction the symp- 
toms entirely disappeared. 

Frequently eye defect results in loss of ambition, 
disinclination to study, and apparent dullness. 

Case 3. — Girl, age sixteen years. She was behindjn her class and 
complained of headaches and of becoming sleepy while reading. 
About this time she exhibited an aversion to studying and to 
practising on the piano. This was inexplicable to her mother, 
as the girl had always been very studious, and only the year 
before had won class honors. An acute catarrhal inflammation 
of the eyes brought her to the oculist, whoTound that she had 
hypermetropic astigmatism. The proper correction brought com- 
plete relief and all the disturbing symptoms vanished. 

That the strain of hypermetropia may produce dull- 
ness is well known to teachers who have given the sub- 
ject any attention. The effect of this nervous tension 

> The author is indebted to Drs. H. L. Wolfner, F. E. Woodruff, Green- 
field Sluder, and Meyer Wiener, of St. Louis, and Dr. D. N. Alcorn of 
Stevens Point, Wis., for the history of the cases, not otherwise credited, 
which are reported in this chapter. 



KEFLEX NEUEOSES 119 

is more disastrous because the usually excellent vision 
of those afflicted renders it so insidious. "Near- 
sighted children, who are quickly detected by the school 
test, can often read for hours with the book held at 
their near points, and frequently are the brightest 
scholars in the school, while their hypermetropic neigh- 
bors of equal mental capacity, who pass the school test 
by a more or less excessive accommodative effort, 
finding that they cannot maintain for long the added 
strain for near work, fall behind in their studies."^ 

Case 4. — Boy, age ten years. This child was quick and bright 
in many ways, but dull in school. When studying he became 
sleepy, but was always ready to play. At times he complained 
of headaches, but as his vision was good, no thought was given to 
his eyes. Finally, however, largely on account of his excessive 
nervousness, he was taken to an oculist in order that his eyes 
might be definitely excluded as a causative factor. Under a 
mydriatic considerable latent hypermetropia became manifest. 
When this was corrected his headaches ceased, and his renewed 
interest in his studies brought great improvement in his class 
standing. 

Case 5. — Boy, age eleven years. Surroundings good, but he was 
so dull in school that he had fallen three years behind. Examina- 
tion revealed mixed astigmatism. When this was corrected he 
began to improve physically, and two years later he had over- 
taken his former classmates. 

Headache is so commonly caused by eyestrain that 
the more intelligent physicians now make this the 
starting-point in their diagnosis. In 1899, Dr. Risley 
went over the records of one thousand consecutive eye 
patients, and found "that upward of fifty per cent, 
of them complained of headache, and that many of 
them had been sent to him by their physicians in the 
hope that the pain in the head, which had proved 
rebellious to general treatment, might be due to some 

» Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. CLII, 1905, pp. 209-210. 



120 MIND IN THE MAKING 

ocular defect." * One of Dr. Risley's associates found 
that out of two thousand patients, drawn from private 
and hospital practice, seventy-three per cent, suffered 
from headache.^ 

Dr. Barker^ investigated one hundred of his former 
migraine patients, and the records showed that fifty- 
five of these were cured when their error of refraction 
was corrected. Of the remainder, thirty-one received 
great benefit, seldom having any attacks, and those 
which they did have could usually be accounted for by 
excessive eye work, worry, indiscretion in eating and 
drinking, or by failure to wear their glasses. Five of 
the fourteen, who were not benefited by the correction 
of their error of refraction, were cured by tenotomy of 
the ocular muscles. 

A few cases, culled from the medical journals, will 
illustrate this type of reflex disorder. 

Case 1 . '' — Girl, age twelve years. This girl complained of constant 
headache accompanied, at times, by nausea and vomiting. She 
had been obliged to leave school because her headache was al- 
ways aggravated by study, and for the past year she had been 
treated, without relief, by a general practitioner. "She was 
pale, without appetite, very nervous and restless at night, and 
suffered from palpitation of the heart." Correction of her hyper- 
metropia brought relief from the headache and nausea, and was 
followed by improvement in her general health. 

Case 2. — Girl, age eleven years. For a year the child had been 
troubled with headache, vertigo and nausea. She had little appe- 
tite, was anemic and nervous, but especially restless at night. 
A short, hacking cough, which was increased by nervous attacks 
to which she was subject, greatly worried her parents. Two 
months before consulting Dr. Coover, " she became suddenly un- 



> The Eye and Nervous System, by Posey and Spiller, p. 744. 
Ubid. 

= The Ophthalmic Record. Vol. XVI, 1907, p. 1. 

^ The following two cases are taken from Dr. D. H. Coover's paper in 
The Medical News, Vol. LXVII, 1895, p. 450. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 121 

conscious, her body was convulsed, and she foamed at the 
mouth. This attack lasted about ten minutes; preceding it she 
became very nervous and suffered from severe headache. She 
had, in all, seven attacks. They usually came on in the evening 
after school." Full correction of her hypermetropia was followed 
by the disappearance of her headache and cough, and the con- 
vulsive attacks ceased. 

Case 3.' — Girl, age nineteen years. From early childhood she 
had been afflicted with severe and continuous headache accom- 
panied by gastric trouble and malnutrition. Three months of 
monocular exercise, with correction of her error of refraction, 
was followed by complete recovery. 

Case 4.2 — Girl, age ten years. She suffered from indigestion 
and headache, and was in a state of nervousness bordering on 
melancholia and hysteria. In addition, she showed symptoms 
of enuresis, which usually occurred at night. This trouble had 
existed for two years, and a number of physicians had been 
consulted, but without relief. Examination of her eyes dis- 
closed ocular defects, which were corrected, and in six months 
she had entirely recovered. 

Case 5? — Girl, age fifteen years. Five weeks before the phy- 
sician was consulted she had fallen in a convulsion while in 
school. During the attack she was unconscious and foamed at 
the mouth. " The aura consisted of pain in the head, dizziness, 
and blackness of vision, and after this she passed into a general 
tonic spasm, which lasted for five minutes." These attacks fol- 
lowed continued use of her eyes, and they occurred either in 
school or shortly after. She was nervous and suffered from 
almost constant headache. Examination of her eyes showed 
compound hypermetropic astigmatism. Glasses were prescribed, 
and so long as she wore them she had no attacks, but on one 
occasion, when they had been mislaid, she had four convulsive 
seizures. After they were found and again worn the attacks 
once more ceased and had not returned up to the time when 
the case was reported. 

Sometimes choreic symptoms accompany the central 
disturbance produced by the reflex irritation. 

' Reported by Dr. George M. Gould in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association, Vol. XXXIX, 1902, p. 1110. 

2 Reported by Dr. Percy R. Wood in the Journal of the American 
Medical Association, Vol. LXVIII, 1907, p. 50. 

3 Reported by Dr. D. H. Coover in The Medical News, Vol. LXVII, 
1905, p. 450. 



122 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Case 1. — Boy, age thirteen years. He was constantly blink- 
ing, and with this habit was also associated a slight twitching 
of the facial muscles; the boy was tall for his age, slender, and 
pale, and his mother said that he had grown very fast. He com- 
plained of headaches and at times of pains in his eyes. After 
he had read for a while the letters blurred and had a tendency 
to run together. When examined by the oculist he was found 
to have hypermetropic astigmatism, the correction of which 
soon brought complete relief, and in a short time his choreic 
tendencies entirely passed away. 

Case 2. — Boy, age ten years. Surroundings good; he was 
very fond of out-door play, but had not developed physically iis 
he should. His symptoms were nervous muscular twitchings, 
at times greatly exaggerated. His eyelids were in constant motion, 
and occasionally he complained of severe headaches. His ocular 
error of refraction was relieved and his muscular insufficiency 
treated, and he was kept under observation for eight months, 
during which gradual improvement was noticed. When last 
seen, three years after consulting the oculist, all of the choreic 
symptoms had disappeared. 

Dr. O. F. Wadsworth,^ Dr. William C. Posey,' Dr. 
E. R. Lewis,^ Dr. Henry W. Kilburn,^ and Dr. George 
M. Gould ^ have reported cases of torticollis and spinal 
curvature which were caused by eye defects. 

Some years ago Dr. George T. Stevens published^ 
the result of the treatment of thirty-four cases of 
epilepsy on the supposition that ocular defects were an 
important factor in producing their epileptic condition. 
"Of this number," he says, "five were withdrawn from 
treatment before obtaining any relief from important 
ocular defects, and should not be included in calculat- 
ing the results of treatment. The remaining twenty- 

' Transactiorif: of the American Ophthalmological Society, 18S9, p. 381. 

2 Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. XXXIX, 1902, p. 
1365. 

3 Ophthalmic Record, Vol. XII, 1903, p. 22. 

* Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. CLII, 1905, p. 210. 
6 American Medicine, Vol. VII, 1904, pp. 513 and 518. 
8 Functional Nervous Diseases, 1887, pp. 104 and 106. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 123 

nine cases have been treated only by removal of ocular 
defects. Of these twenty-nine cases, fourteen may be 
considered well; two, who are still under observation, 
are believed to be permanently relieved; three others, 
still under treatment, have received such marked relief 
that it is believed that an entire discontinuance of the 
malady may be expected. One, who had manifested 
some improvement, died by accident four months after 
his first visit. Seven others have received temporary 
relief, while two have manifested no improvement." 

While there has been something of a reaction, lately, 
against Stevens' view of the relation between eye de- 
fects and epilepsy, one finds it difficult, after an ex- 
amination of recent medical literature, to escape the 
conviction that the central nervous irritation resulting 
from eyestrain may be so great as to destroy the 
stability of centres hereditarily weak and produce epilep- 
tiform convulsions. Space permits the citation of only 
a few cases. 

Case \} — Girl, age nine years. From her fourth year the child 
had had epileptic convulsions. When this record was made 
they were occurring from three to six times a month. At eight 
years of age she was sent to school and the convulsions then 
rapidly grew worse. A year after the correction of her com- 
pound myopic astigmatism, her parents reported that the seizures 
ceased soon after she began to wear the glasses. 

Case 2. — Girl, age eight years. The child had manifested 
epileptic symptoms since she was three years of age. Examina- 
tion showed compound hypermetropic astigmatism, which was 
corrected, and when the case was reported, five months after 
the glasses were prescribed, her parents said that during that 
time she had been free from attacks. 

Case 3.^ — Girl, age eighteen years. Dr. W. F. Conners, who 
reported this case, says that the girl consulted him for what she 

' The two following cases were reported by Dr. C. M. Clapp in the 
New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXX, 1899, p. 412. 
2 Medical News, Vol. LXIII, 1893, p. 531. 



124 MIND IN THE MAKING 

called nervous spells. Investigation showed that they were 
. epileptiform seizures. In other respects her health was good. 
Correction of her error of refraction brought complete relief from 
the attacks. 

Case 4. — Dr. S. W. Toms tells of a man, twenty-four years of 
age, " now confined for epileptic insanity in one of the colonies. 
He never had had a convulsion until he was ten years of age — 
the period of life when active school work begins and use of the 
eyes becomes considerable. There was no family history, even 
the remotest, of epilepsy. His mother, however, had suffered 
from headaches. The attacks of the boy continued, despite 
rigorous medication, as long as he attended school. He was 
withdrawn from his studies and the convulsions ceased, without 
medicine, for three years. An attempt to take up art after school 
work caused a relapse, the convulsions became more severe, and 
continued application to his art, combined with heroic drugging, 
brought on insanity."' 

Dr. Ranney cites ^ numerous cases of epilepsy of 
which the exciting cause, at least, was the reflex irrita- 
tion produced by eyestrain. Eighty-seven per cent, of 
these patients, he says, were either wholly cured or 
greatly benefited by correction of their ocular defects. 
Dr. Horatio C. Wood^ also includes astigmatism and 
other imperfections of the eyes among the exciting 
causes of epilepsy. 

Another form in which a reflex neurosis, having its 
primary cause in the eyes, may appear, is seen in a 
remarkable case reported to the writer by Dr. D. N. 
Alcorn, of Stevens Point, Wisconsin. 

About nine years since, a man visited Dr. Alcorn for 
examination. In the course of the inquiry the following 
facts were learned. During the three preceding years 
the patient had suffered from three attacks of what his 

« Medical News, Vol. LXXVII. 1900, p. 689. 
> New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXV, 1897, pp. 16 and 45. 
* Pepper's American Text- Book of the Theory and Practice of Medicine, 
1896, Vol. I, p. 620. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 125 

physicians diagnosed as paralysis. For about three 
months after each attack the man was afflicted with 
sensory aphasia. He was unable to interpret written 
or spoken words. He could pronounce words, but 
they had lost their meaning for him. During the entire 
three years he had been unable to attend to any business. 
The visual acuity of his left eye was twenty-twentieths 
and of the right eye about six two-hundredths. Under 
a mydriatic the left eye manifested a slight degree of 
hyperopic astigmatism and the right eye a high degree 
of mixed astigmatism, corrected with a + 3.00s O 
— 7.00 C axis 80°. With this correction the visual acuity 
of the right eye was twenty-twentieths minus. The 
final correction made for both eyes was : left eye -}- 25 C 
axis 180°, right eye + 3.00s O —7.00 C axis 80°. The 
patient returned in three months and said that he had 
entirely recovered and was attending to his business 
regularly. A year or two later he was again seen and 
reported that he had never felt any symptoms of a re- 
lapse since he began wearing the glasses nearly nine 
years before, except on one or two occasions when his 
glasses had become twisted or when for some reason 
he had laid them aside. 

An editorial writer in a recent number of American 
Medicine,^ under the title "One Overlooked Factor in 
the Increase of Insanity," says that "the action of the 
malformed eye, as has been demonstrated by science, 
and by thousands of clinical cases, begets diseases of 
eye, of cerebral action, of feelings, and of nutrition. . . . 
Suicide, it has been found, is exactly in proportion to 
the number of hours of school life and study demanded 
in the country concerned. To this suggestive fact is 

' Vol. VII. 1904. p. 228. 



126 MIND IN THE MAKING 

now added the demonstration that insanity is almost 
precisely in the same proportion." 

Drs. Walton and Clienney cite ' the case of a woman 
of thirty-three who was committed to an asylum be- 
cause of impulses to injure others, especially her child 
and husband. The history of her derangement "is 
full of accounts of hysterical attacks (sometimes con- 
vulsions), when she would be noisy, scream, attack the 
nurse, for whom she ordinarily had great regard. She 
had sinking spells, and was so easily exhausted that 
most of her time was spent in bed." Finally, she was 
fitted with glasses which brought so much improvement 
that she was discharged, and the attending physician 
agrees with Drs. Walton and Chenney that, but for the 
glasses, she would have been in the asylum to-day. 

I am aware that there is a strong disinclination among 
alienists to accept the view that definite nervous dis- 
orders may be produced by eyestrain. It is to be 
regretted, however, that they have adopted the legal 
method of basing their defence on technicalities. Dis- 
tinctions between predisposing and exciting causes are, 
of course, essential to the science of disease, but a sick 
man is less interested in classification than in being 
cured. Now it is indubitable that, in numerous in- 
stances, alienists are wholly unable to give relief until 
the oculist has done his work. In extreme cases, like 
epilepsy and insanity, I have no wish to deny predispo- 
sition, but if the transition of the predisposition into 
actual disease is due to the nervous irritation caused by 
eyestrain, then the latter becomes a true etiological 
factor. Further, if it can be shown that there are cases 
in which the disease-stage would not have been reached, 

1 Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. CXXVII, 1892, p. 156. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 127 

had not this exciting cause existed, and the cures after 
correction of the errors of refraction seem to estabhsh 
this, then the distinction between precHsposing and ex- 
citing causes loses much of its significance. 

The apparently organic diseases which may be of re- 
flex origin caused by uncorrected ocular defects seem to 
cover very nearly the entire field of pathology. Dr. M. 
P. Smithwick cites cases ^ from his practice which show 
that eyestrain may produce gastric intestinal neuroses. 
He has cured indigestion, after all treatment has failed, 
by having the error of refraction corrected. Drs. 
Stockton and Jones call eyestrain "one of the most 
prolific causes of functional gastric disturbances," and 
they add, "almost any neuroses may be induced by it. 
. . , Without attempting to refer the condition to any 
special form of eyestrain, we have, nevertheless been 
impressed with the frequency of the association of 
astigmatism and muscular imbalance, with painful 
sensory conditions of the stomach, especially taking the 
form of distress and pain."^ Hypermetropic astigma- 
tism they regard as "the most common form of eye- 
strain met with in nervous affections of the stomach,"^ 
but "muscular errors are exceedingly aggravating and 
constitute a fruitful source of reflex gastric disturbance," 
while compound hypermetropic or mixed astigmatism, 
with irregular axes, and perhaps anisometropia, is a 
very common form of brain and nerve-disturbing eye- 
strain." 

Sometimes eyestrain reacts upon the moral nature 
and, if not relieved, may even result in a permanently 
perverted disposition. Dr. Peter A. Callan testifies 

' The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. CXLIII, 1900, p. 444. 
^American System of Practical Medicine, Vol. Ill, p. 111. 
8 Ibid., p. 134. 



128 MIND IN THE MAKING 

that he has no hesitation in saying "that refraction 
errors of high degree have great influence on the forma- 
tion of the character. The young myope seeks com- 
panionship in his books — grows introspective — lives in 
an ideal or unreal world of his own creation; he be- 
comes bashful, diflSdent, and takes no part in the sports 
of his companions, so that his physique suffers. The 
hypermetrope with high degree of error learns but 
slowly, on account of the great strain to see — books are 
to him distasteful. He may be classed as a dullard 
by his parents and teachers, and often censured un- 
justly, when really he has entered the race heavily 
handicapped." ^ 

Recently the writer's attention was called to a young 
man who, at ten years of age, suffered from excessive 
bleeding at the nose. The slightest exertion would 
bring blood. He was so timid that he would not 
go to school alone. His nervous system was almost 
wrecked. Any boy's play in which he was one of the 
objects of sport would cause him to burst into tears 
and run into the school-room for protection. After this 
had continued for a year or two, his mother decided to 
have his eyes examined. Excessive hypermetropia was 
at once detected and glasses prescribed. Almost imme- 
diately the boy's whole nature changed. The bleeding 
at the nose ceased, and he began to grow strong. In a 
short time his timidity disappeared and he became one 
of the boys, as courageous in play as any of them. 

Some forms of eye defect cause children to be mis- 
understood. Teachers are likely to judge the char- 
acter of a pupil by his facial expression Failure to 

^The Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol. XVI, 1891, 
p. 435. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 129 

look them in the eye, when talking to them, gives the 
impression of insincerity. This often does children in- 
justice, since it is well known that in certain forms of 
muscular inequality the open and frank expression of 
the face seems to be wanting, while in other muscular 
defects there is a markedly blank expression of the 
face. In both cases it is difficult to look steadily into 
the eyes of the person to whom one speaks. 

The chief obstacle to relieving eyestrain in children 
is the fact that some of the causes of the most serious 
reflexes do not interfere with the acuity of vision. Dr. 
Callan refers to one of his patients who had long suf- 
fered with migraine. "When I first suggested to her 
that her eyes were at fault," he says, "she remarked 
that it was impossible, for her vision was excellent, 
and none of the many physicians whom she had con- 
sulted, both at home and abroad, ever even mentioned 
such a thing." ^ Dr. Toms also says that he is often 
confronted in his practice with the statement, "I am 
sure, Doctor, that my headaches do not come from 
my eyes, as I can read the names of the steamboats on 
the river." ^ "It is these far-sighted (hypermetropic) 
eyes," he continues, "that so frequently have their con- 
comitant symptoms; and, moreover, a considerable 
portion of those having a muscular anomaly are per- 
fectly emmetropic, or have normal vision. The efforts 
that the brain centres make in the acts of accommoda- 
tion and adjustment in producing perfect pictures on 
the retina, and in binocular single vision, more es- 
pecially in near work, produce eyestrain, and reflex 
symptoms develop." 

• The Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. XVI, 1891, 
p. 437. 
« The Medical News, Vol. LXXVII. 1900. p. 89. 



130 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Myopia is practically the only eye-defect that receives 
any attention in our schools and, so far as nervous 
strain is concerned, it is also the least important, because 
it cannot be counteracted by effort. Hypermetropia, 
muscle insufficiency, and the various forms of astig- 
matism, on the other hand, are far more serious. 
Hypermetropic eyes are never at rest. From morning 
until night the strain continues, and in many instances 
a fixed innervation of the ciliary muscle prevents relief 
even during sleep. Contrary to the popular idea, also, 
it is the lesser optical defects that are accompanied by 
the greatest strain, because in these cases the effort of 
the ciliary muscles to correct the error and secure per- 
fect vision is unceasing. In large optical defects this 
effort may be relaxed. The fact that hypermetropic 
subjects usually have excellent vision makes this de- 
fect especially difficult to deal with, as parents and 
teachers are not inclined to attribute headaches and 
other signs of nerve exhaustion to eyes that see as well 
as the best. How great a strain there may be under 
such conditions is shown by two cases which recently 
came to the writer's notice. 

A young man, a student, had the normal vision 
of twenty twentieths. Under a mydriatic it fell to 
twenty one-hundredths, showing that only by a 
strong effort was he able to accommodate for even 
distant objects. Objects at the near point required, 
of course, as much effort again, thus doubling the 
strain. 

The other case was even more exhausting to the ner- 
vous system. It was that of a young man whose vision 
was slightly better than normal, or twenty-twentieths 
plus. Under the influence of a mydriatic he was able to 



KEFLEX NEUROSES 131 

see only the twenty two-hundredths line. When it is re- 
membered that the vision of a normal eye is not affected 
by a mydriatic, the great effort these young men were 
obliged continually to exert, in order to see clearly, be- 
comes apparent. Such a strain, continued through 
childhood, cannot fail to undermine the vitality of the 
nervous system. The fact that the effort is exerted 
unconsciously does not make it less exhausting. In- 
deed, for that very reason, the strain is more wearing 
because it cannot be relaxed as it could, were it 
a voluntary act. On this account there is a constant 
drain upon the energy needed for the growth of the 
nervous elements and for perfecting the cerebral 
organization. 

Dr. Toms cites the case of a boy of twelve who suf- 
fered from intense morning headaches. "Both father 
and mother were far-sighted. The patient was a de- 
voted student, ambitious to progress in his school work. 
I attended him for some months for headaches that 
would awaken him during the early morning hours, 
causing such intense pain that he would cry for hours. 
This condition persisted in spite of medication and 
regulation of diet . . . until it was about decided by 
his parents to take him out of school, although his phys- 
ical condition was vigorous, and his health otherwise 
uniformly good. Before taking the step his eyes were 
examined." With the -correction of the error of re- 
fraction found by the oculist, "he improved so rapidly 
that he gained ten pounds in weight within six months, 
and school work was subsequently extremely easy for 
him. I have seen him within a week," continues Dr. 
Toms, and "he is about to graduate. It is now three 
years since this examination was made, and he informs 



132 MIND IN THE MAKING 

me that he has never been troubled since with his 
former affliction."^ 

Dr. James Hinschelwood holds that "ocular head- 
ache due to eyestrain is certainly one of the most com- 
mon forms of chronic headache. Judging from my 
own experience and that of others," he says, "I am 
quite certain that at least fifty per cent, of the cases of 
chronic headache met with in ordinary practice are due 
to this cause." ^ This factor is likely to be missed be- 
cause "headache is often produced by a very slight 
error of refraction, which scarcely interferes with the 
patient's visual acuity. ... In astigmatism and hy- 
permetropia there is a constant strain on the part of the 
ciliary muscles to counteract the refractive error, and 
this strain is the cause of the headache."^ 

Dr. M. W. Zimmerman has made an extended and 
careful statistical study of reflex neuroses, and finds 
refractive errors or ocular imbalance a probably pro- 
lific cause of headache, epileptiform attacks, vertigo, 
abnormal head position and blepharospasm.^ 

"I am still seeing patients," said Dr. Risley, "who 
have passed into middle life, having from youth been 
the victims of headache, who are cured of their life- 
long malady by the correction of ocular defects, the 
real cause of their suffering never before having been 
suspected by themselves or by their physicians."^ 
Dr. Risley cites an extreme case of a man who suffered 
excruciating headaches culminating "in loss of con- 
sciousness, convulsions, frothing at the mouth, and 

« The Medical News, Vol. LXXVII, 1900. p. 690. 

* The Glasgow Medical Journal, Vol. LXI, 1904, p. 9. 
a Ibid., pp. 9, 10. 

* New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXXVIII, 1903, pp. 973, 1040. 
6 Philadelphia Medical Journal, Vol. IV, 1899, pp. 569-570. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 133 

wounding of the tongue, after which he would fall 
into a profound sleep, often lasting for several hours, 
from which he could not be aroused."^ Dr. Risley 
corrected his eyestrain, and when he saw him eight 
years later, found that the headaches and convulsions 
had entirely ceased since the treatment of his eyes. 

Muscles cannot act unceasingly, as they must in un- 
corrected hypermetropia and muscular imbalance, with- 
out becoming fatigued and in time exhausted. If this 
condition continues, the muscles finally lose their re- 
cuperative power, and the condition becomes patho- 
logical. In organs that require continuous muscular 
control, as in the heart, the action is intermittent, and, 
in this way, the rest needed for the preservation of 
muscular tonicity is secured. The human eye has 
evolved under conditions that called for distant vision. 
Primitive man used his eyes preponderantly for objects 
remote or coarse. With the discovery of writing and 
printing all this suddenly changed. It is one of the 
fundamental principles of evolution that new conditions 
call for new adaptations, and the beginning of writing 
and printing is still very recent, when considered from 
the standpoint of adaptive requirements. Some of 
man's organic diseases arise from the strain upon the 
organs that have not yet adapted themselves to the 
upright position, and yet man has been a biped very 
many times longer than he has been a reading and 
writing animal. With the change from rural to urban 
life the conditions requiring near vision again made 
rapid strides, with accompanying additional eyestrain, 
and the eye has not had time to adjust itself evolution- 
ally to the new situation. In other words, an eye 

' Philadelphia Medical Journal, Vol. IV, 1899, p. 569. 



134 MIND IN THE MAKING 

adapted chiefly to distant sight, with only short periods, 
if any, of near vision, is suddenly called upon to reverse 
its habits. 

As early as 1874, Dr. Weir Mitchell recognized the 
seriousness of eyestrain. "The strain caused by the 
various forms of astigmatism," he said at that time, 
"I have often seen cause headache, but slight insuffi- 
ciency of some of the intraocular ball muscles is far 
more likely to give rise to it. Indeed, I could relate 
case after case of this kind. In all of them the head- 
ache comes by degrees, and it is at first found only 
upon long use of the eyes. By and by, almost any eye 
use causes pain. The over-effort made to correct or 
accommodate and converge or diverge the eyes at first 
causes pain only on such effort, but at last the teased 
brain gets to aching when the patient is not trying the 
eyes, when he is thinking, or doing a little mental arith- 
metic, or the like."^ 

Function precedes adaptive structure, and mal-func- 
tion precedes and produces pathological structural con- 
ditions by its very functional disturbance. In Gould's 
opinion, "weariness, alternating with hyper-excitability, 
truancy (escape from ocular labor), morbid introspec- 
tion, nameless torments and self-tormentings, diseased 
habits, hopelessness, melancholia, manias, incipient and 
functional insanities, and indirectly occupational fail- 
ure, crime, and many other errant trends,"^ ^^^^J f*^l~ 
low in the wake of brain-fag and nervous breakdown 
caused by the nervous irritation which results from the 
morbid ocular struggle. Indeed, Gould ascribes the 
suffering and nervous peculiarities of Swift, Nietzsche, 

' The Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter, Vol. XXXI, 1S74, 
p. 83. 

2 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXVII, 1&05, p. 744. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 135 

Parkman, George Eliot, Carlyle, Whittier, Darwin, 
Wagner, Taine, Symonds, Heine, De Quincey, Huxley, 
Lewes, Margaret Fuller, Jules Verne, de Maupassant, 
Balzac and Berlioz, directly or indirectly to eyestrain/ 
The fifth volume of his series, which has recently ap- 
peared, is perhaps the most convincing, because it con- 
tains specific cases in which the effect of correction of 
ocular defects has been followed and observed. In 
connection with Gould's belief that crime may often be 
indirectly caused by eye defects, the examination of the 
eyes of the inmates of the Elmira Reformatory by Dr. 
G. M. Chase ^ is significant. Only thirty-one and one- 
half per cent, of those tested were found to have no 
serious error of refraction or disease. These figures 
become even more striking from the fact that, on ac- 
count of the diflSculties involved, the muscles were not 
tested unless the imbalance was sufficient to cause 
diplopia. 

In considering the insidiousness of eyestrain it is 
interesting to find a California physician. Dr. G. S. 
Hull, of Pasadena, saying that "among the many in- 
valids who seek our southern California climate, there 
are a few nervous wrecks who find but little help until, 
by some stroke of good fortune, they fall into the hands 
of an oculist; and when he has acted his part the cli- 
mate has an easy time in finishing the cure, for which 
it generally gets the biggest share of the credit."^ 

In looking over the medical literature one is struck 
with the importance that general practitioners are at- 
tributing to eyestrain. Dr. George H. Thomas says 

« Popular Science Monthly, Vol. LXVII, 1905, p. 747, and Gould's BiO' 
graphic Clinics. 

2 Reprint from the Ophthalmic Record, Nov., 1906. 

3 Ophthalmic Record, Vol. XI, 1902, p. 27. 



136 MIND IN THE MAKING 

that the result of his professional practice is the "set- 
tled conviction that one of the most important organs 
in the body capable of producing a great variety and 
degree of neurotic symptoms is a pair of eyes affected 
with some refractive error or some want of balance of 
their external muscles." ^ Among these neuroses he 
mentions in order of frequency "neurasthenia (which 
might include insomnia, irritability, weariness, and 
mental confusion), nervous dyspepsia, vertigo (includ- 
ing some forms of car-sickness and sea-sickness), and 
finally migraine." Some years ago, Dr. George T. 
Stevens made the same observation when he wrote that 
"difficulties attending the functions of accommodating 
and of adjusting the eyes in the act of vision, or irrita- 
tions arising from the nerves involved in these proc- 
esses, are among the most prolific sources of nervous 
disturbances, and more frequently than other condi- 
tions constitute a neuropathic tendency." ^ 

The recognition that so-called organic diseases are 
often not organic but functional reflexes, resulting from 
abnormal nerve impulses that have their origin in ir- 
ritated nerve centres, makes the subject an important 
one for students of child psychology. So long as the 
irritation continues the centres can send out only 
erratic impulses which are followed by functional dis- 
order. Naturally, the child cannot do his school work. 
The nerve energy required by the brain is exhausted in 
attempts to meet unnatural calls made upon it by such 
organs as are the immediate recipients of these dis- 
ordered impulses. 

Teachers should understand that unwillingness to 

1 The Northwestern Lancet. Vol. XXIII, 1903, p. 1S8. 

2 Functional Nervous Diseases, Their Causes and Their Treatment, p. 21. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 137 

study and a decided preference for mischlevousness do 
not necessarily mean that the child is the incarnation 
of original sin or that he is possessed of the devil. The 
devil may be cast out by correcting the child's hyperme- 
tropia. Children, who can focus their eyes for near ob- 
jects only by a constant and severe effort, cannot be 
expected to enjoy studying. 

"The facial twitchings of school-children, with brow- 
pain, irritability of temper, restlessness, inability to sit 
quietly for a moment, disturbed sleep, precarious ap- 
petite, all of which makes them the despair of their 
mothers or teachers, I have many times seen relieved," 
says Dr. Risley, "by a pair of glasses. Wliether these 
cases are to be classed as petit chorea or not, it is cer- 
tain that the eyestrain was for them the 'thorn in the 
flesh,' which produced a constant irritation of the 
nervous system."^ 

A strain that, according to the more progressive 
pathologists, may cause many of the most serious ner- 
vous diseases, culminating sometimes in nervous pros- 
tration, chorea, epilepsy, and some forms of insanity, 
cannot longer be ignored by educators. The careful 
observation of children by those trained to read nerve 
signs is of fundamental importance in order that possi- 
ble causes of reflex diseases may be remedied before the 
nerve centres become habituated by continued irrita- 
tion to abnormal action. 

During adolescence the demand for nerve force is 
great. Bodily changes are rapid and, with the best 
conditions, nerve centres are under heavy strain to 
supply the needed energy. When work is improperly 
done it uses up a great deal of energy wastefuUy, Irri- 

' Philadaphia Medical Journal, Vol. IV, 1899, p. 571. 



138 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tated centres send out abnormal impulses which result 
in deranged functional activity of the organs. The 
organs strive to do their work as it should be done, and 
in their blind effort to preserve the integrity of their 
activity they call for more nerve energy; but the centres, 
because of their derangement, are able to give them 
only impaired impulses. 

A badly led army needs a great many more men than 
one commanded by a military genius. Even with over- 
whelming numbers it meets the enemy only to be de- 
feated, and an urgent call is sent in for reenforcements. 
But numbers will not atone for deficient leadership. 
In fact, their excess only adds to the confusion and de- 
moralization. It is the same with the functional ac- 
tivity of organs. Deranged centres can send out only 
deranged impulses, and these, in turn, can give only a 
deranged product, and, however persistent the call for 
more energy, it will serve only to increase the functional 
disorder so long as it comes from a disordered centre. 

The pharyngeal vault and nasal cavities are also 
sources of reflex disorders. 

Adenoids are an exaggeration of normal growth of the 
lymphoid tissue composing the pharyngeal tonsil. This 
tissue is normal in childhood. It appears about the 
fourth month of foetal life and continues through early 
childhood, but should have been absorbed at about 
sixteen years of age. As soon as it begins to grow it 
becomes pathological, because in swelling it extends 
forward into the nose, often closing it as effectually as 
a stopper closes the entrance to a bottle. Under these 
conditions the sleep which should be restful is dis- 
turbed by the work of breathing, and so hard is this at 
times that the child sweats throughout the night from 



REFLEX NEUROSES 139 

muscular exertion. Energy that should go into growth 
is spent in the effort to breathe. Naturally, the child is 
tired through the day. Not only has he lost the night's 
rest, but in addition has used up his surplus vitality in 
merely breathing. Normal growth, under these condi- 
tions, is of course impossible because of exhausted 
vigor. So the child is undersized. The pharyngeal 
tonsil lies between the Eustachian tubes, which are the 
outlets for the ears into the throat, and when it enlarges, 
it encroaches upon these so as to produce deafness. 
Statistics ^show that ninety-five per cent, of the deafness 
of children is thus caused. Deafness, even though 
slight, added to the lassitude resulting from a depleted 
nervous system, makes the child stupid in school as 
well as inattentive, and all the time his teachers are 
wondering why he will not do his work. When re- 
lieved of these adenoids, children invariably grow 
brighter, and not infrequently begin to develop phys- 
ically with an almost incredible rapidity, sometimes 
growing six inches in six months, and taking on weight 
proportionately. 

A few cases from the records of a practising phy- 
sician^ will show the significance of these reflex dis- 
orders. 



Case 1. — Girl, age fourteen years. Mouth-breather and deaf. 
Six months after removal of adenoids she had grown three 
inches. Her deafness also disappeared, and she showed great 
improvement in her school work. 

Case 2. — Girl, age eleven years. Mouth-breather and con- 
sidered stupid in school. With the removal of the adenoids she 
grew six inches in about four months, and at the same time 
made unexpected progress in school. 

' The author is indebted to Dr. Greenfield Sluder of St. Louis for the 
notes of several of the cases cited here. 



140 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Case 3. — Boy, age twelve years. Mouth-breather and unde- 
veloped. In three months after the operation he had gained 
remarkably in weight and strength. 

Case 4.' — Girl, age eighteen years. This girl had severe head- 
aches on an average of two or three times a week. Treatment 
for atrophic rhinitis and chronic naso-pharyngitis resulted in a 
complete cure. 

Case 5. — Girl, age four years. The child was a delicate little 
thing, with her mouth always open. When asleep she snored 
and was extremely restless, and when awake she looked very 
stupid. After removal of the adenoids she became active, looked 
alert, and began to grow rapidly. At the time of the last report 
she was a large, healthy girl. 

Adenoids have a most unfortunate effect upon the 
faces of children. Interruption of nasal breathing com- 
pels the child to keep his mouth open, and as a result 
the muscles become relaxed, and the face assumes a 
flat, insipid appearance. If the adenoids are removed 
in time, the face again resumes its distinctive lines of 
individuality. 

Case 6. — Girl, age twelve years. She was pale and sleepy- 
looking, with mouth constantly open, and altogether giving 
every indication of poor development. Her face was so expres- 
sionless as to give her an almost idiotic look. She was hard of 
hearing, very careless of her personal appearance, and in her 
school work quite stupid. After the adenoids had been re- 
moved, and other needed nasal treatment given, her face un- 
derwent so complete a change that, quite unexpectedly, as 
her friends report, she was transformed from the homeliest girl 
of her school into the most attractive. She began to grow 
rapidly, and soon became as animated and bright as before she 
had been lethargic and dull. In her personal habits, also, a 
radical change was noticed. Instead of untidiness in dress, 
neatness now characterized her, so great an influence over one's 
habits does bodily feeling exert. 

Case 7. — Girl, age ten years. This child was dull in school, and 
her mouth-breathing gave her the usual stupid look. When the 

' Reported by J. W. Jerney in the Medical Record, Vol. LV, 1899, p. 
353. 



/n 



REFLEX NEUEOSES 141 

adenoids were removed and she was able to breathe freely 
through her nose, her school standing improved at once, and her 
stupid appearance gave way to a vivacious frank expression. 

Case 8. — Girl, age eight years. She was listless in school and 
unable to understand what was explained to her or to learn her 
assigned lessons, but as soon as the operation was performed, all 
this changed, and she had no further difficulty with her school 
work. 

Case 9. — Boy, age nine years. This boy, who was quite deaf, 
had such a flat, expressionless, frog-like face, that his neighbors 
thought him an idiot. Removal of unusually large adenoid 
growths changed not only his facial expression, but his dispo- 
sition as well. Previous to the operation he had been cross 
and selfish. Now he became gentle and kind-hearted, and with 
the return of his hearing and the rejuvenation of his physio- 
logical functions, his intelligence greatly increased. 

I am acquainted with a young man who, when a boy, 
was conspicuous chiefly for his dullness. He stopped 
growing, and his friends lost hope, fearing he would 
remain dwarfed. His mouth-breathing, to which no 
attention had been given before, finally led to an ex- 
amination by a specialist. The pharyngeal vault was 
found so filled with adenoid vegetation that the re- 
spiratory organs could hardly force air through. These 
growths were removed and the boy grew six inches 
during the following year. His whole mental condi- 
tion underwent a marked change. He ceased to be 
stupid. 

A child with polypoid growths in the nasal cavities 
is not in condition to do good brain work. He is in- 
attentive and dull. His dullness, however, is not proof 
of deficient mental power. He feels uncomfortable and 
stupid, without knowing why. His nerve energy is 
used up in nourishing diseased tissue, which, in turn, 
reacts as an irritant upon the brain, causing it to send 
out abnormal impulses to other organs. In this way 



142 MIND IN THE MAKING 

functional derangement spreads, and no one knows 
what ails the boy. ''Headache, mental dullness, bad 
memory, languor, lassitude, defective nutrition, and 
stunted growth are some of the results of post-nasal 
vegetation,"^ and when once this is recognized and 
acted upon, many of the so-called nervous headaches 
will disappear, and children will no longer work against 
the resistance of physiological irritation. 

"The symptoms of adenoid vegetation vary accord- 
ing to the amount of hypertrophy and the size of the 
naso-pharynx. The patient usually keeps the mouth 
open, and thus acquires a stupid expression; snoring 
during sleep is common; the features are often sharp, 
and the palate arched. A constant tendency to catch 
cold exists, and the patients are often said to be absent- 
minded. Guye states that many children afflicted with 
adenoid vegetation are unable to fix their attention, 
and hence have difficulty in learning."^ 

Adenoid vegetation in the pharyngeal vault is a 
source of infection and is liable to affect the brain. 
Whether its influence on the brain is wholly due to 
sympathy, or to the interference with the proper drain- 
age of the lower cells of the brain,, or whether, as has 
been maintained, there is a fibrous connection between 
the Luschka's tonsil and the brain, is unimportant. 
That any hypertrophy in the pharyngeal cavity renders 
children unfit for school work and causes reflex func- 
tional diseases is a fact which teachers should not over- 
look. 

These growths, if not removed, may result in per- 
manently impaired hearing. "The patient often com- 

> Dr. Da\id McKeown: British Medical Journal, 1900, Vol. II, p. 894. 
McBride: Diseases of the Throat, Nose and Ears, p. 336. 



REFLEX NEUROSES 143 

plains of tickling or scratching sensations in the throat, 
of snapping sounds heard during mastication or deglu- 
tition, of fatigue in listening, and difficulty in hearing 
during general conversation, though he may readily 
understand one person talking alone; and often of 
noises in the head and giddiness."^ 

"No symptom of the disease possesses greater im- 
portance, or requires more thorough appreciation and 
study, than that of ear complications, occurring, as they 
do, early in life, and at a time when only their prompt 
recognition may save the patient from permanent loss 
of hearing. The proportion of cases which escape ear 
trouble is small." ^ 

Mental inefficiency may result from functional de- 
rangement occasioned by the continued effort of the 
brain to do its work under diseased conditions. Nerve 
impulses may be obstructed or diverted by the physical 
condition of the nerves through which they pass. Since 
the brain is, first of all, a physical mechanism, and as 
such cannot be exempt from physical limitations, 
mental efficiency rests primarily upon a vigorous 
nervous system healthily environed. Teachers should 
know the part that reflex neuroses play in mental hy- 
giene, and in their preparatory training they should learn 
to recognize the indications of these affections in order 
that the nervous irritation may be relieved before it be- 
comes a serious menace to brain growth and mental 
development. 

1 Ingals: Diseases of the Chest, Throat and Nasal Cavities, p. 611. 
' Bosworth: Diseases of the Nose and Throat, p. 302. 



CHAPTER V 

SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES OF DEVELOPMENT 

The changes which the nervous system of children 
undergoes after seven or eight years of age are essen- 
tially developmental. The brain has now attained 
ninety per cent., or more, of its maximum weight, and, 
though measurements show further enlargement, this 
increase is comparatively slight and wholly inadequate 
to account for the amazing expansion in mental ca- 
pacity which begins at about this time of life. The 
length of time required for perfection of function varies 
for different organs. Those that are concerned with 
vital processes must, of course, mature very early, and 
with them comes the organization of the spinal nervous 
centres essential to their control. The growth of the 
complex structures of the cortex, in which the phys- 
iological processes that underlie the higher mental 
functions occur, and the differentiation of these func- 
tions, belong to the formative period of childhood, and 
the higher an animal stands in the evolutional series, 
the greater the length of time needed to complete this 
development. This is required by the increasing un- 
certainty of the environment. Animals that are born 
fully developed are incapable of sudden adaptive 
changes. Their nervous systems are built to explode 
in definite ways, and the appropriate stimulus is the 

144 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 145 

igniting spark. A ready-made nervous system ceases 
to be efficient the moment the environment becomes 
changeable or the production of offspring drops below 
the point of compensatory supply. Nervous structure 
must keep pace with the growing complexity of sur- 
rounding conditions; and, as man was born amid 
the throes of climatic convulsions, a nervous system 
with fixed reactions could not meet his needs. The 
higher nervous structures — those which appeared latest 
in the evolutional process — are the last of all the organs 
of the body to become functionally perfected, and 
somewhere, hidden within their recesses, lies that 
which marks the difference between man and the high- 
est animals below him. 

The incomparable difference in mental capacity be- 
tween the child of seven, when the brain has so nearly 
reached its maximum size and weight, and the adult, 
indicates corresponding neural changes, though our 
knowledge of the nature of tissue-anabolism during the 
growth process is at present exceedingly meagre. 
Rudimentary cells must develop and become capable of 
functional activity, and the labyrinthine system of in- 
tercellular fibres — association paths — must be organ- 
ized. All this requires time, and it is because of its 
long period of immaturity that the nervous system is so 
sensitive to its environment. The heads of children 
living in tenement houses, for example, are smaller 
than those of children in healthier surroundings. No 
organ while developing is able to offer much resistance 
to disease. Continual change in chemical and molec- 
ular structure makes its derangement easy. Its tissues 
have not yet acquired the firmness that, a little later, 
will enable it to hold its own against the strain which 



146 MIND IN THE MAKING 

now SO easily breaks it down. During childhood the 
constituents of the nerve-cell are in a condition of un- 
stable equilibrium. Its superabundant energy is over- 
prone to discharge, and this disruptive tendency makes 
the inroad of bad heredity easy, and exposes it, de- 
fenceless, to the onslaught of disturbances incident to 
growth and development. 

Education is not merely the training of cell-structures 
through the inertia of their inherited qualities. The 
development of each individual brain is as truly an 
evolution as is that of the race. Investigation has 
shown that instincts do not appear until called out by 
the appropriate stimulus. If the stimulus is delayed 
beyond their nascent period, these instincts may never 
appear. Hodge has found ^ that the "untamable" 
ruffed grouse can be domesticated. His investigations 
prove beyond question " that a grouse chick hatched in 
an incubator or under a hen, from an egg taken from 
a nest in the woods, is every whit as 'tame' as a chick 
of the domestic fowl; and it remains so until it ex- 
periences something to make it 'wild.'" Clearly, edu- 
cation, in a large sense, has much to do with the actual- 
ization of qualities and characteristics, even when they 
have behind them the impelling force of racial heredity. 
Undeveloped nerve-cells are always found in human 
brains, and probably no one will venture to assert that 
they were all predestined to remain half formed and 
useless. The inference that their growth was checked 
by poverty of stimuli or by derangement through ner- 
vous disturbances is not unreasonable, especially when 
it is remembered, as has previously been shown, that 
the same condition of arrested development, only ex- 

' Country Life in America, April, 1906, p. 686. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 147 

aggerated, is found in the centres for sense organs 
whose use was lost in early life. It is probable that 
each area of the cortex has its own time for developing, 
which, in turn, is determined by need for functional activ- 
ity, though our knowledge of the manner and time of 
growth of the different parts is still very inadequate. 
The critical period, when growth to functional perfection 
may be interrupted by nervous disturbances, is, of 
course, greatly extended by this prolongation of cerebral 
development. Any disturbance at this time is disas- 
trous, not alone in arresting growth, but also in opening 
paths of nervous disorder. As nervous energy, like 
other forces, tends to take lines of least resistance, these 
erratic impulses easily become habitual. Functional 
derangement often continues for no other reason than 
because it began. A large part of a physician's 
work consists in helping organs to function rightly 
until the old habit has been broken and a new one 
acquired. A better way is not to let them acquire 
diseased habits. 

"Chorea is essentially a disease of childhood."* 
"The vast majority of cases develop between five and 
sixteen years of age." ^ In the great majority of cases, 
the first attack occurs between five and ten years of 
age, and after this, although second attacks are not 
uncommon, primary attacks are rare. Chorea is be- 
lieved to be an infectious disease of bacterial origin. If 
this is true, the disease cannot be inherited in any other 
way than as a neuropathic predisposition. There may 
be a bacterial invasion of the central nervous system, or 
even of the cortex, but these cases are probably in- 

' Putzel's Functional Nervous Diseases, p. 1. 

2 Church and Peterson's Nervous and Mental Diseases, p. 530. 



148 MIND IN THE MAKING 

frequent. The disease is believed to be usually caused 
by bacterial inroad into some other part of the organ- 
ism. As in all other infectious diseases, lowered vital- 
ity, lessening, as it does, resistance, renders the subject 
especially susceptible to attack. For this reason the 
disease often follows in the wake of measles, chicken- 
pox, rheumatism, and diphtheria. 

The first beginnings of chorea in children are fre- 
quently misunderstood and thought to be the result of 
perverseness. A child, when in school, is seen to be 
restless and to move nervously from side to side in his 
seat. If observed more closely, the muscles of the 
fingers or hands may be seen to twitch, and the child is 
likely to drop his pencil, or slate, or any other light ob- 
ject which he may be holding. In addition, indications 
of mental disturbance may be detected, either before or 
at about the same time as the muscular irregularities 
appear. "These symptoms consist of a slight loss of 
memory, and inability of the patients to apply them- 
selves to their studies as well and continuously as 
formerly. Children who were previously of an obe- 
dient and mild disposition become irritable, obstinate 
and perverse. They become insubordinate, lose their 
love of play, and are not so affectionate as was their 
wont. These phenomena are naturally looked upon 
as indubitable evidences of wilfulness, and are pun- 
ished accordingly, thus frequently precipitating and 
aggravating the course of the disease."^ The psy- 
chical symptoms of chorea are of such extreme im- 
portance for parents and teachers, and so likely to be 
misinterpreted, that it has seemed best, at the risk of 
some repetition, to quote from one of the latest writers 

• Putzel's Functional Nervous Diseases, p. ]. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 149 

on nervous diseases of early life. Where the onset of 
the disease is gradual, "the appearance of the abnormal 
movements is preceded by alteration of the mental and 
physical condition of the child. She becomes more 
nervous and more impressionable than before; she is 
irritable, and often laughs and cries without apparent 
cause. Her facial expression is mournful, she is in- 
creasingly unable to apply her attention, and she cannot 
do her lessons. At this time, careful scrutiny will de- 
tect slight involuntary movements of the face and of 
the fingers, often unilateral in distribution. She be- 
comes clumsy in her movements — overturns her glass 
at the table, and lets fall objects which she is holding. 
The inevitable reprimands which she suffers for these 
faults have an immediate effect in augmenting her 
clumsiness. . . . She may become capricious, irritable, 
and obstinate, and in many ways troublesome. Her 
memory may be impaired. She takes less interest in 
her surroundings, and this may progress until marked 
hebetude exists."^ 

Movements often occur first in the face, and here they 
are always bilateral. The less noticeable movements, 
such as are seen in the early stages of the disease, take 
the form of twitches in the corners of the mouth and in 
the lips. In more severe cases the strangest distortions 
may be seen. "At one moment the angles of the 
mouth are drawn downward, then turned outward, 
then the lips are pursed. The forehead is thrown into 
wrinkles, the eyebrows are brought together, then are 
released, and the eyes blink. Suddenly the face be- 
comes passive, in the most forlorn expression, to break 
into a smile or an ugly grimace a moment later. . . . 

• James Taylor: Nervous Diseases in Childhood, pp. 228-236. 



150 MIND IN THE MAKING 

The hand is the next to follow, and the left hand is af- 
fected earlier and more often than is the right." ^ 

The first symptom of chorea to attract attention may 
be incoordination of voluntary movements. This is 
most noticeable in the lack of precision of the hand and 
forearm. At this stage of the disease there is always 
evidence of more or less insufficiency of muscular con- 
trol. The child has difficulty in innervating the re- 
quired muscles, and when, with a supreme effort, he 
finally succeeds, the movement is intermittent and ac- 
companied by other useless innervations, showing a 
purposeless diffusion of nervous energy. Sometimes 
only one side is affected, and a voluntary movement on 
the normal side of the body is accompanied by a similar 
involuntary one on the abnormal side. 

The arm movements of choreic children are often 
made with a flourish. If told to shake hands, instead 
of putting the hand straight out, like normal children, 
they first wave it around a trifle. If the child sits in a 
chair, with his hands resting flat on his knees, and 
counts ten aloud, the fingers will be seen to twitch, even 
after he has been cautioned to hold them still. If told 
to put out his tongue, he usually thrusts it out, and, 
while out, it often writhes and squirms in a character- 
istic manner. When told to put it back, the child with- 
draws it quickly and closes the mouth abruptly. 

Some slight deflection from the normal disposition is 
often the first indication of approaching nervous dis- 
turbance. Frequently the change betrays itself only 
during the excitement of some task requiring the mental 
effort of attention. As will be seen from the cases cited 
below, the disease is sometimes accompanied by un- 

' James Taylor : Nervous Diseases in Childhood, pp. 228-236. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 151 

usual mental activity, at times passing rapidly into 
striking excitability. On the other hand, inactivity or 
stupidity may exist for some weeks before the serious- 
ness of the change attracts attention. The choreic 
movements may, at first, be so slight and so general as 
to be considered only restlessness or fidgetiness. Most 
children are often unconscious, or only half conscious, 
of their disabilities, and this should always be kept in 
mind in dealing with them. 

Through the kindness of several alienists,^ the writer 
is permitted to cite cases from their records. 

Case 1. — Girl, age ten years. The child was bright and well- 
advanced in school, when, without any discoverable reason, she 
suddenly began to be listless and emotional. The change came 
eo gradually as not at first to attract unusual attention, espe- 
cially as, at first, the remonstrances of her teachers and parents 
seemed to have good effect. Later, however, when scolded, she 
became so excited that she was removed from school. By this 
time her lethargy had caused her parents to consult a phy- 
sician, who discovered that her left arm and leg were becoming 
weak. Within a short time choreic movements developed in 
the left side. This proved to be a tedious case of chorea, from 
which, however, the patient finally entirely recovered. 

Case 2. — Boy, age ten years. Choreic movements began in 
the right hand, and soon the entire right side of the body was 
affected. Later, his right hand became weak and he dropped 
articles which he was holding. His tongue also showed the char- 
acteristic choreic movements. He was taken from school and 
recovered, under treatment, in three weeks. 

Case 3. — Girl, age nine years. Tlie child had never been sick 
before. Her attack began with twitching of her fingers, and 
muscular weakness and lack of coordination caused her to drop 
things. She broke dishes and was punished for it. This made 
matters worse, and now her arms and legs made random move- 
ments, so that she bruised herself. A little later her inability to 
coordinate made it necessary to feed her. With rest and treat- 
ment she recovered four weeks after a physician was consulted. 

' For the reports of the cases not otherwise credited, which are cited 
in this chapter, tlie author is indebted to Drs. Frank R. Fry, William 
W. Graves, and Given Campbell, Jr., of St. Louis. 



152 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Not infrequently, the attack will be preceded by com- 
plaint of rheumatism, or of "growing pains." 

Case 4. — Girl, age six years. The movements, which the phy- 
sician recognized as choreic, were first noticed by the child's 
parents about two weeks before he was consulted. During the 
five preceding weeks she had suffered considerably from rheu- 
matism, but no one had thought of its possible connection with 
approaching chorea. 

Case 5. — Girl, age eleven years. For six months she had 
complained of headache and severe pains in her knees and 
elbows, the latter of which her parents ascribed to growth. 
Three weeks before the physician was consulted the child began 
to drop small things. When she was seen by the physician 
chorea was clearly manifest. She was taken from school, placed 
under treatment, and recovered in six weeks. A second attack, 
which promptly yielded to treatment, occurred a year later. 

Case 6. — Boy, age twelve years. He complained to his 
mother of a good deal of "aching," but little was thought of it, 
and he continued to attend school. Later, he told his mother 
that he could not write well — was too nervous — and that his 
school-mates were helping him write his exercises, because 
his hand trembled. He had been severely reprimanded by his 
teacher for inattention and for little disturbances in school. 
His mother called upon the teacher to ask the cause of the 
trouble, and was told that the boy was "just bad"; he learned 
his lessons so easily, she said, that he had too much time in 
which to be mischievous. One evening, when at home, a spring- 
bed creaked, and at once the boy collapsed nervously. From 
that time chorea was declared. 

Frequently, it is the bright, precocious children who 
show choreic symptoms. Their nervousness is often 
a feature of their brightness. They are able to accom- 
plish a good deal in a short time, and so their teachers 
are apt to urge them on, though they are just the ones 
who should be restrained in their mental development. 

Case 7. — Girl, age eight years. For a month, or more, the 
child had complained of aching "all over, ' but the pain was 
especially severe in her ankles and knees. Her parents thought 
that she had growing pains, and a physician, who was consulted, 



SOIVIE NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 153 

prescribed a tonic. She continued to attend school, and her 
teacher remarked that she was very bright in her studies. Mean- 
while, she was observed to open and shut her eyes so nervously 
that she was taken to an oculist, who at once recognized chorea, 
and advised that an alienist be consulted. Three weeks passed, 
during which time the eye movements grew worse and, in addi- 
tion, general restlessness became noticeable. When she was 
finally taken to the alienist, choreic movements were general. 
On his advice she was at once removed from school, but, up to 
the time of leaving, her school work was of an unusually high 
grade and her deportment entirely satisfactory. 

Case 8. — Boy, age thirteen years. This boy greatly annoyed 
his parents and teachers by a sort of snorting and sniffing. He 
was often chided, but without effect. Finally, however, it be- 
came so annoying that the boy was taken to an alienist, who at 
once detected chorea. During all this time the lad was dis- 
tinctly bright in his school work. 

At times the emotional side of the malady is promi- 
nent, and the manifestation of the disease may then 
follow a comparatively slight shock. 

Case 9. — Boy, age thirteen years. The attack followed the 
extraction of a tooth. Choreic movements were evident in both 
sides of the body. 

Case 10. — Boy, age twelve years. The first noticeable peculi- 
arity was a pharyngeal click. His parents and teachers thought 
it nothing more than a vicious habit, and they tried to make 
him stop it, but without success. Meanwhile, things did not 
go right at school. The boy was nervous and fidgety, and 
wholly incapable of concentrating his attention. The most 
trivial annoyance would cause him to burst into tears. When 
seen by the physician, choreic symptoms were easily recognized. 

Case 11. — Boy, age eleven years. This boy had always borne 
a good reputation with his teachers for deportment and scholar- 
ship, when suddenly, within two or three weeks, he became in- 
volved in three or four fights with his schoolmates. Investiga- 
tion showed that in each case he had been the aggressor. These 
misdemeanors were leniently dealt with because of his previous 
good record at home and at school. A little later, however, 
another exceedingly vicious attack upon a classmate would have 
caused his expulsion, had not his father asked the privilege of 
quietly withdrawing him. In his home, also, the boy had begun 



154 MIND IN THE MAKING 

to show capricious irritability and emotionalism, crying at the 
least provocation. This case well illustrates the fact that emo- 
tional symptoms of the disease may precede the characteristic 
movements. Not infrequently, in school children, chorea is pre- 
ceded by a condition of irritability, which is quite commonly 
misinterpreted, and, as a result, mental derangement is liable to 
be more firmly established. 

Case 12. — Girl, age sixteen years. This girl was exceptionally 
healthy looking, and intelligent and bright as well, as is so likely 
to be true of choreic children. Shortly before the time of which 
we are speaking, her teacher noticed, with surprise, that she was 
falling behind in her work. Her mother, also, had observed 
that she was losing her wonted vivacity and becoming indifferent 
to her work. Meanwhile, though protesting that she was per- 
fectly well, the girl began without cause to exhibit emotional out- 
breaks. For no observable reason she would burst into tears, 
and about this time choreic movements began to appear. At 
first the motor disturbances occurred only during her emotional 
attacks, but soon they became constant, and then the cause of 
her trouble was apparent. Removal from school, with out-of- 
door life, effected a cure in about two months. 

Case 13. — Boy, age six and a half years. This child was in 
the kindergarten, and had always been well behaved at home 
and at school. Quite unexpectedly he began to exhibit inex- 
plicable tantrums, the tendency to which would last for several 
days, and then he would again relapse into his usual good be- 
havior. This alternation in conduct was so pronounced as to 
attract the attention of the mother of the boy, as well as that 
of his teacher. During these tantrums, the child was raging 
mad and wholly uncontrollable. Then, no less suddenly, he 
would become gentle and tractable. This condition continued 
for more than two weeks before choreic movements were pro- 
nounced enough to cause his parents to confer with an alienist. 
He was at once withdrawn from school, and recovered in about 
ten weeks. 

The cases cited above were taken from the records of 
ahenists, and for that reason may be thought to have 
been unintentionally colored by the physicians' interest 
in nervous diseases. Unfortunately, such cases are not 
uncommon. One physician, in a letter to the writer, 
says: "I frequently see choreic children on the streets 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 155 

and in the street cars. In some instances the mani- 
festations are not very pronounced, but they are readily 
detected by the practised eye. There is considerable 
variety in these movements, both in their location and 
intensity. The disease may be first manifested by 
slight grimaces, often by general restlessness, which 
make it impossible for the child to subside into a restful 
position. In the vast majority of instances, the presence 
of choreic movements should be the signal for removing 
the child from school." 

Conversation with any thoughtful teacher will show 
that the condition has not been exaggerated. The fol- 
lowing cases, taken from the writer's note-book, were 
described to him by teachers: 

Case 1. — Girl, age eighteen years. "This girl," says the 
teacher, " has been under my observation from the age of thirteen 
to eighteen. During this time nervousness was manifested by 
a quick, jerky manner of speech following a hurried, breathless 
beginning. The sentence would then die away, without any 
coherent ending. While reciting or conversing, her face twitches, 
and abrupt movements of the shoulders and shuffling of the feet 
are quite noticeable. These peculiarities are more marked 
when, for any reason, her general health is unfavorably affected. 
Rest and freedom from school duties benefited her, but did not 
effect a complete cure. The girl is a daughter of a very nervous 
mother." 

Case 2. — Girl, age twelve years. "Last year, this girl was ex- 
cessively nervous. Throughout the recitation her hands and feet 
were in constant motion, and sometimes she left her seat from 
restlessness. I took no notice of her fidgetiness in class," con- 
tinues her teacher, " and favored her when I could, so as to lessen 
the nervous tension. This quiet way of dealing with her seems 
to have been helpful, as, this year, she is much improved. Per- 
haps the excitement of a new school was in part responsible for 
her nervousness. Her mother tells me that she herself, when a 
girl, was quite nervous." 

Case 3. — Girl, age twelve years. "Her entire body is in 
almost constant motion. She cannot stand still when talking, 



156 MIND IN THE MAKING 

and her arms and legs seem never to be at rest. Her face, also, 
twitches. Inability to do creditable work in history and geog- 
raphy seems to aggravate her nervousness." 

Case 4. — Girl, age twelve years. The teacher was unable to 
make any essential distinction between this girl and the one 
cited under Case 3. The only difference was that, in this one, 
the choreic movements were a little less intense than in the 
other. 

Children are especially susceptible to choreic infec- 
tion because functional stability has not yet been estab- 
lished in their nerve centres, and, while this unstable 
condition exists, motor processes easily occur and run 
their course independently of volition. 

In its acute form, chorea readily yields to treatment, 
provided the patient is placed under right conditions. 
The first requisite, however, is that the nervous system 
be given complete rest, and so the child should at once be 
removed from school. "I know of many cases," said 
Weir Mitchell,* "which get well when they cease to 
study, and relapse at every new effort to do school 
work." It is because of the danger in delay that it is 
so important for parents and teachers to be acquainted 
with the usual symptoms. **The state of disordered 
action, whatever be the essential cause, is sometimes 
ineradicably impressed upon the nerve elements, and 
chronic chorea results."^ 

Among the diseases of the nervous system are certain 
ones for which no pathological alteration in the neural 
apparatus has been discovered. While it is probable 
that neural changes of some sort also underlie these 
nervous disturbances, which improvement in the means 
for their investigation may yet disclose, so far as present 

• Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, p. 146. 
2 James Taylor's Nervous Diseases in Childhood, p. 251. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 157 

knowledge goes they seem to be the manifestation of 
derangement of functional control. To this class of 
nervous affections belong tics, or habit spasms. 

Simple tic, according to Taylor, is a frequent disorder 
of childhood, and occurs most commonly between five 
and ten years of age, while eighty per cent, of the cases 
fall between the ages of five and fifteen. 

The origin of this motor affection is usually a move- 
ment voluntarily started for the relief of pain, or for 
some other good reason. Later, when the irritation 
which caused the act has disappeared, the movement, 
now purposeless, continues involuntarily as a tic. 

"Over and over again," writes Dr. Weir Mitchell,^ 
some anxious mother will ask you to notice her child on 
account of some little trick or gesture in which the 
child indulges. Then you will see that it is winking 
rapidly, or pursing up the mouth, or drawing it to one 
side, or, perhaps, that the brow is lifted at intervals, 
or a shoulder shrugged, or some forward movement of 
the jaw or head is repeated over and over, at varying 
intervals." Whatever may be the movement, it is 
likely in time to disappear and be replaced by another. 
The child may resist the inclination, but continued 
resistance brings discomfort, while yielding gives at 
least momentary relief. The trouble is aggravated by 
attracting the child's attention to the defect, or by 
deterioration in health. 

The motor phenomena of tics are the outward man- 
ifestations of a central functional process, and, for this 
reason, imitation, to which the young are especially 
prone, plays an important part in the propagation of 
the disorder. If, to this tendency to imitate, there be 

' Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, pp. 156-157. 



158 MIND IN THE MAKING 

added a highly nervous temperament, the most favor- 
able combination is furnished for the development of 
the malady. On this account it is of great importance 
that children who exhibit this neurotic habit be removed 
from school, so as to prevent the spread of the disease 
through imitation, for, among predisposed children, 
nothing is more contagious. It is not necessary that 
the movement be continually present to start the imita- 
tion. Seeing it only once may suffice, since the novelty 
of a movement often fascinates children and, by hold- 
ing their attention, gives the cue to the imitative 
tendency. 

Home surroundings, as Meige and Feindel have 
shown,^ are often active predisposing factors. Vacil- 
lating parents, in whom inexcusable submission to 
capricious entreaties alternates with unreasonable pro- 
hibitions, who are tender or harsh, patient or impa- 
tient, according to their mood, are sowing the seeds of 
nervous diseases; and the crop will be bountiful. Tics 
are often only bad habits which, if taken at the start, 
may be eradicated; but if, through the carelessness or 
weakness of parents, they be allowed to grow, they are 
certain to become pathological. Self-control is one of 
the things that tic patients need to learn — indeed, their 
cure, many times, consists largely in this — and the 
early lessons are received from the sagacious and con- 
siderate firmness of those in authority over them. 

Case 1. — Boy, age eight years. For nearly a year before the 
conference with the physician, this lad had been in the habit of 
moving the left half of his face, and it was noticed that when he 
was fatigued the spasm was more severe. Upon the advice of 
the alienist he was taken from school and sent into the country, 
with instructions to live out of doors. After several months the 

• Der Tic, Leipzig und Wien, p. 89. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 159 

movements had practically ceased, though they still occur, in a 
Blight degree, if, for any reason, his health deteriorates. 

Case 2. — Girl, age eighteen years. Until eight years of age she 
was strong and well. At this time, however, she became very 
irritable and would cry with the least provocation. Shortly 
after this, the girl was badly frightened at being seized and held, 
on the street, by a strange man, and a little later wriggling move- 
ments of the body were noticed, with sudden elevation of the 
shoulders, and opening and closing of the hands. Frequently, 
also, she would stamp her feet on the floor, whether sitting or 
walking. These motor disturbances were thought to be caused 
by chorea, and, during several years she was treated for this dis- 
ease, but received no benefit. Her mother said that the move- 
ments were always more pronounced when the child was alone 
or occupied with her playthings. At the time when she came 
under the writer's observation, nearly ten years after the begin- 
ning of the disorder, the fingers of her left hand were in constant 
motion, the left shoulder was frequently elevated and rotated 
inward, her mouth was puckered at irregular intervals and her 
brow raised, while now and then wriggling movements of the 
body were accompanied by irregular shuffling of her left foot, 
with occasional stamping movements. As indicating some of the 
distinctions between chorea and tic, it was noticed that her 
movements were coSrdinated, that they could be imitated, that 
they did not interfere with her voluntary movements, and that 
she was able, by fixing her attention upon them, to inhibit the 
movements for a variable period of time. At this stage of the 
malady she could restrain the movements while counting ten, 
but so soon as this number was reached she lost control. When 
asked why she did not remain quiet longer she replied, "Oh, I 
just had to do it." In response to the question as to whether 
she felt relieved after making the movements, she said, "yes." 
The patient recovered completely one year after her disorder 
was diagnosed as tic. A part of the treatment consisted in 
standing before a mirror and inhibiting the movements as long 
as possible. At the end of a year, she was able to resist the in- 
clination until she counted five hundred, and this marked the 
date of her cure. During this interval, she also practised gym- 
nastics and spent much of her time out of doors. 

Case 3. — Boy, age fourteen years. This case was reported by 
Dr. Weir Mitchell.' The boy had been removed from school be- 
cause his irascibility and capriciousness, together with twitching 

' Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, pp. 160-161. 



160 MIND IN THE MAKING 

of the face, and general nervousness, convinced his parents that 
something was wrong. The facial movements were somewhat 
irregular, diminishing when some new symptom appeared, though 
they never wholly ceased. The lad also rolled his head in a 
curious way. These disorders disappeared for a time, and then 
the child begaji, at intervals, to contract abruptly his abdominal 
muscles. By fixing his attention upon these movements he 
could restrain them for about fifteen minutes, but any slight 
relaxation was followed by the movement. The strain of atten- 
tion and resistance was attended by discomfort. After a month 
or two, new movements appeared; the respiration was inter- 
rupted every few minutes by an abrupt long inspiration, and a 
little later he began to give his neck a sudden twist, accompany- 
ing this movement by a shake of the head. These anomalies, 
in turn, gave way to a shrugging of one shoulder, with an up- 
ward jerk of the whole side of the body. The last of this curious 
array of motor disorders was a sudden straightening of the whole 
body. These varying conditions endured for several years. At 
one time the boy seemed well, then spring-time,' or any little 
malady, especially indigestion or much study and indoor life, 
seemed to reproduce the trouble in some shape, new or old." 

Migraine frequently first manifests itself in childhood, 
thouffh it is not so common as chorea and tic. Accord- 
ing to Gowers, one-third of all the cases begin between 
five and ten years of age, while two-fifths occur be- 
tween ten and twenty. Its beginning is often preceded 
by slight pains and spasms, or by some ill-defined dis- 
tress in the stomach, which the child is unable to de- 
scribe, but which may lead to erratic acts. Not in- 
frequently the malady is first disclosed by obscured 
vision, which supervenes in such a manner as to con- 
fuse the child. One physician reports that two children 
recently came under his care who, for a few minutes at 
a time, were unable to see writing or figures on the 
blackboard, but a little later saw them clearly. Their 
teachers, not understanding the conditions, thought that 
the children were shamming. 

' Chorea and tic seem to be aggravated in the spring. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 161 

The following case illustrates in how strange a man- 
ner the attack may be ushered in : 

A girl, ten years of age, and bright in her studies, 
suddenly began, one day, to belch and to produce a 
gurgling sound. She was reprimanded by her teacher, 
but insisted that she could not help it. Within a day or 
two the same act was repeated, and this time her teacher 
was convinced that it was done from mischievousness. 
A few days later a similar attack was prolonged, and 
as the child was evidently in distress, she was sent home 
with a note asking her mother for an interview. Before 
the mother visited the teacher the girl had suffered two 
attacks at home, and, as in the second of these she was 
in great distress, a physician was called, who pronounced 
it hysteria. Within a few days the child had a typical 
attack of migraine. When it had passed she seemed 
as well and cheerful as ever. Within a week there was 
a recurrence of migraine, preceded, as before, by the 
stomach disturbance. 

Heredity is undoubtedly an important predisposing 
factor in causing migraine, but it is no less certain that, 
in many instances, the onslaught of the disease is due to 
exhausting nervous strain. This may be a partial ex- 
planation of the prevalence of the disease among pre- 
cocious children. Recurring emotional excitement, 
fatigue, or excessive school work, especially when at- 
tended by anxiety and worry, make fertile soil for 
renewing the growth of morbid hereditary tendencies. 

Authorities disagree regarding the frequency of 
hysteria in childhood, but it is probably more common 
than has generally been admitted. Clarke^ says that 
the disorder is not infrequent in children and, according 

' J. Michell Clarke: Hysteria and Neurasthenia. 



162 MIND IN THE MAKING 

to Gowers/ one-half of the cases occur during the 
second decade of life, while Ranney^ states that a very 
large proportion of the cases occur at the age of puberty. 
Agreement is general that, in cases of juvenile hysteria, 
the excess of females, found among adults, does not 
occur. The influence of surroundings is seen in the 
partiality of the disorder for the only child, as well as 
in the frequency with which imitation spreads its symp- 
toms among school children. Fear of failure in school 
work, in the case of timid children, and continued ridi- 
cule by playmates, are important exciting causes, es- 
pecially with those predisposed to nervous instability, 
and precocious children are particularly prone to the 
disorder. Though quiet, retiring children are not free 
from hysteria, it is much more likely to occur in the 
highly emotional, because excitable, volatile natures in- 
dicate lack of inhibitory control, and this is favorable 
to the development of neurotic disturbances. 

Inquiry concerning the nature of the disorder does 
not bring an answer that is altogether satisfactory. No 
pathological change in any part of the brain has, as yet, 
been discovered, and many of its phenomena seem to 
justify the view that its origin must be sought in purely 
psychical conditions. The mental states which exist in 
hysteria appear, many times, to be separated^ from the 
regular stream of consciousness; they have their own 
groups of associations which cannot be connected with 
any of the ideas that constitute the normal consciousness 
of the individual. This break in consciousness makes 
it difficult, if not impossible, to influence the diseased 

' Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System, p. 985. 
* Lectures on Nervous Diseases, p. 507. 

^Studien uber Hysteria, by Breuer and Freud, and various contributions 
by Pierre Janet, especially The Major Symptoms of Hysteria. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 163 

ideas in the usual way, and renders the disorder pecul- 
iarly responsive to suggestive treatment. 

Case 1. — Girl, age ten years. The child was making excellent 
progress in school, though she was somewhat timid in her recita- 
tions. Her mother had noticed that this timidity had increased 
during the last year or two, and that she was very sensitive, 
and cried easily when scolded. There was no history of serious 
nervous disease in either branch of the family, but the father was 
nervous and sleepless when worried about his business, and her 
mother was always startled by sudden noises. Shortly before 
the physician was consulted, the child complained to her teacher 
that she could not see the print in her books, but, when tested, 
the dimness of vision was found to be confined to the right eye. 
Sometimes her vision seemed normal, but, on other occasions, 
objects appeared black, if the left eye was closed. The first time 
when her field of vision was mapped, that of the right eye ranged, 
irregularly, between twenty and forty degrees from the point of 
fixation, with an average of about thirty degrees, while in the 
left eye, no part of the field of vision exceeded ten degrees. On 
the following day the right field was found to be less than five 
degrees, at all points. The tracing made after her recovery 
shows the normal visual field. 

Case 2. — Girl, age twelve years. On two occasions, when 
leaving her class-room, her legs gave way and she fell to the 
floor. She arose and left the room greatly chagrined. As she 
was a vivacious girl, fond of joking, her parents and teachers 
thought that she did it to create amusement, but, meanwhile, it 
was noticed that she was not so well as formerly. Soon she was 
unable to stand and went to her bed, where she remained, except 
when carried about, for one year. One day, as she heard the 
voice of her cousin, for whom she had been anxiously waiting, 
she suddenly leaped out of bed and ran downstairs, and from 
that time she had no further trouble. 

Case 3. — Girl, age eighteen years. As this girl was not pro- 
gressing in her studies at school, she was taken out and placed 
with a seamstress, "that she might have something to do." 
The alienist, when consulted, found that she had hysterical 
anaesthesia on both sides of her face, and on her hands up to her 
wrists. She had been badly frightened, at eleven years of age, 
by the St. Louis cyclone, and her trouble dated from this, though 
the possibility had not occurred to her parents. 

An interesting illustration of the extent to which 



164 MIND IN THE MAKING 

little children may be unconsciously affected by condi- 
tions is seen in the following: 

Case 4. — Girl, age twenty-three months. The family, with the 
httle girl, had been passing the evening with a neighbor, and, 
on their return, found that the house had been robbed. Natur- 
ally, great excitement prevailed, to which, however, the little 
child seemed to pay no attention. She was calling for something 
to eat. An hour later, when her mother was putting her into 
bed, she cried out in a paroxysm, "Mamma, see man, he's rob- 
ber-man! " This was repeated every night until, finally, a physi- 
cian was called. 

Epilepsy is the most serious of all developmental 
neuroses, because of the nervous deterioration to which 
it usually points. Clouston puts it next to insanity, in 
gravity, and adds that "almost all cases of true epilepsy 
first arise during the growth and development of the 
brain." ^ Spratling's studies^ show that the greatest 
number of cases occur before five years of age, and 
that the next, and almost equally dangerous period, is 
from ten to fourteen. After the age of nineteen the 
disease decreases rapidly in frequency. Periods of 
rapid brain growth, and of physiological change — the 
approach of puberty — are evidently the dangerous ages 
for this dread disease. 

The great importance which some writers attach to 
heredity in the etiology of the malady is probably due 
to the fact that their statistics must, necessarily, be 
based on cases in which the ancestry was conspicuously 
bad, and this becomes evident when one sees that their 
conclusions are derived from patients, one or both of 
whose parents had some clearly defined disease of the 
nervous system. If, in this instance, however, we mean 

' Neuroses of Development, p. 97. 
2 Epilepsy and Its Treatment, p. 50. 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 165 

by inheritance a predisposition to serious nervous de- 
rangements, then it is probable that all epileptics in- 
herit the disease. But the question of greatest im- 
portance here is not whether in a given case it is possible 
to find hereditary characteristics by which the occur- 
rence of epilepsy, or other neuroses of development, 
may be explained, but it is rather whether, under such 
circumstances, the disease Tnust appear. Positive asser- 
tions on this point are perilous, but the effect of open- 
air treatment on the insane,^ resulting, not infrequently, 
in their complete cure, certainly indicates that we have 
hardly begun to avail ourselves of the possibilities for 
thwarting defective heredity, especially in the young, 
when recuperative forces are so strong. 

The function of the cortical cells is the conservation 
of energy generated by the nutritive processes. This 
nervous energy, when accumulated in the cell, is 
available for the furtherance of the physiological 
changes which underlie organic and physical activities, 
and, evidently, the most important office of nerve cen- 
tres, next to storing energy, is its economic utilization. 
This is the weak point in the nervous system of chil- 
dren. Inhibitory centres mature slowly. Action is the 
first requisite, and, for this reason, motor centres must 
develop early, and energy, uncontrolled, is diffused 
aimlessly through the nervous channels, influenced 
by only one purpose — motion — for it is by movement 
that the young come to a realization of their power. 

With the development of inhibition, nervous action 
is no longer directed toward mere movement, and now 
sudden, unregulated discharges suggest a state of cen- 
tral instability which may easily become pathological. 

' New York Medical Journal, Vol. LXXXV, 1907, p. 241. 



166 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Epilepsy is characterized by explosive liberation of 
nervous energy, without adequate stimulus. As the 
usual manifestations of the disease are generally known, 
it has been thought best to cite only one case, which is 
of special interest because of its peculiarities. 

A little girl, eight years of age, while standing in line 
with her classmates during a recitation, suddenly broke 
away from the others and ran around in a circle three 
or four times, then, for a moment, looked confused, 
giggled a little, and became quiet. When reprimanded 
by her teacher she insisted that she did not know what 
had happened. Although unable to explain this be- 
havior, her teacher was convinced that the child was 
telling the truth. At another time, when school was 
being dismissed, the girl behaved in exactly the same 
manner. As her teacher thought that she detected a 
momentary dazed condition, she reported the incident 
to the girl's mother. Soon after, the same act was re- 
peated at home, and has since happened frequently, and 
become more prolonged and intense, and, on two occa- 
sions the child sank to the floor before the attack was 
over. It is now evident that she was suffering from 
epilepsy. The alienist, who reported the case to the 
writer, says that he has known of several similar in- 
stances among school children, and each time the auto- 
matic movements were regarded by the teacher as evi- 
dence of wilfulness. 

The nervous disorders considered in this chapter be- 
long to the group of neuroses which are classed as 
developmental because, if they occur at all, they make 
their appearance during the period of growth. Half 
an hour's observation of pupils at their school work 
will convince one skilled in interpreting nerve signs that 



SOME NERVOUS DISTURBANCES 167 

these maladies have become so common as to menace 
our national health, and the significance of this for ed- 
ucation has been too generally ignored. It is in the 
stress of growth, when organic processes make the 
heaviest demand upon the nervous energy accumulated 
by nerve cells, that disorders of development are espe- 
cially liable to occur. Before seven years of age, all 
available energy is needed for brain growth, and, after 
that, the adjustment of neural functions makes its 
claim. Soon, also, the emotions are rampant and 
movements are settling down to volitional control. 

Nervous energy is not inexhaustible, and, if it is 
drawn upon too largely by the intellect, the bill must be 
paid from the deposit which should remain to the 
credit of physiological development. Happily, racial 
indolence often refuses to be coerced, but it is unfortu- 
nate that instincts are so frequently the child's only de- 
fence against pedagogical enlightenment. 

One of the most important contributions of physi- 
ology to education is the discovery that the organiza- 
tion of nervous structures, in the different parts of the 
brain, occurs at widely separated periods. Some areas 
mature very early, while others are slow in attaining full 
development; and precocity, instead of being a source 
of pride to parents, should be regarded with suspicion 
and carefully watched. Growth, whether physical or 
mental, is always in danger of arrest, and brain nutri- 
tion, and the establishment of nervous stability, ought 
to have the first place in education. During childhood, 
nervous centres discharge spontaneously, and there is 
danger lest the habit of overflowing be fixed, and he- 
reditary tendencies be converted into actual disease. 

Education is not merely an intellectual process. The 



168 MIND IN THE MAKING 

mind and body are too closely interrelated for the in- 
tellect to realize its best when its activities are dis- 
turbed by pathological conditions. Physiological de- 
rangement is an exhaustive drain upon the energy 
needed for healthy cerebration and, if prolonged, is 
liable to arrest mental growth. Medical supervision, 
already an accomplished fact in a few cities, indicates 
progress, but it cannot fully meet the need so long as 
teachers are wholly unacquainted with the advance 
signs of developmental nervous affections. When the 
physician sees the patient the disease is usually well 
established. The important thing is to detect it in 
its incipiency, and this can be done only by those who 
are in daily association with the children. The study 
of the usual signs of approaching nervous disorders 
should therefore be a part of the training of teachers, 
so that the advice of the visiting physician may be 
secured before the disease is declared; otherwise the 
malady may be aggravated by over-stimulation for final 
tests and public exhibitions, or by continued irritation, 
a condition which would at once warn the teacher of 
danger were he but acquainted with the symptoms of 
central nervous disturbance. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 

All questions of mental development are more or 
less closely concerned with the nature of the learning 
process — its general characteristics and specific pecul- 
iarities. The evolution of the brain has been attended 
with evolution of the cerebral activities involved in 
learning, but how close has the correspondence been 
during the stages of the process ? Wliat is the part that 
consciousness has played in this growth in power to do 
things, and what relation is there, if any, between the 
assumption of control by consciousness and the evo- 
lutional stage of the race? In other words, does con- 
sciousness take charge of the details of complex actions 
more frequently in higher races or does it concern 
itself chiefly with the larger, more general features of 
activities, leaving the details for subconscious guidance ? 
This question has individual as well as racial significance 
and opens an immensely practical field in education. 

As one of the chief difficulties in studying the process 
of acquiring knowledge is to find a way of accurately 
measuring the progress of the learner, it seemed advis- 
able to begin with an investigation of a complex act of 
muscular skill. This approach to the general subject 
turned out to be particularly fortunate because some 
mental states are more conspicuous in certain activities 

169 



170 MIND IN THE MAKING 

than in others, and for that reason are more easily 
detected. Besides, it is an advantage to compare ac- 
tivities in which the mental factor becomes increasingly 
prominent. Since mental processes are undoubtedly 
involved in whatever we do, there is no such thing as a 
purely physical act, but for convenience we may desig- 
nate the types of learning considered here as (1) physi- 
cal, the acquisition of skill in a complex muscular act; 
(2) physical and mental, the acquisition of skill in type- 
writing; (3) mental, the acquisition of knowledge in 
beginning a language. It should be remembered, how- 
ever, that this division is intended only to emphasize 
the increasing prominence of the mental factors. 

I. — TOSSING AND CATCHING BALLS 

The feat of skill of keeping two balls going with one 
hand, catching and throwing one while the other is in 
the air, was first selected for several reasons, but the 
chief argument in its favor was the accuracy that it 
permits in measuring the learner's progress. 

The balls used were of solid rubber and weighed one 
hundred and thirty-two and six-tenths and one hundred 
and thirty and two-tenths grammes. This difference 
was not perceptible to the experimenters. The diam- 
eters of the balls were forty-two and forty-four milli- 
meters, respectively. Six young men were tested; five 
with the regular series, and one in keeping three balls 
going with two hands. Five of these men, to whom 
we shall hereafter refer as the subjects, were university 
students and one was a professor. Only five are repre- 
sented in the curves which follow. 

The daily programme consisted of ten series, the 
subject in each case continuing the throwing until he 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 171 

failed to catch one or both of the balls. This con- 
stituted one series. The number of catches made in 
each series was immediately recorded, with any data 
obtainable as to the method pursued and the cause of 
failure. After each series the subject rested as long as 
seemed necessary, and then recommenced the throwing 
until the ten series had been completed. There was 
no practice whatever between the series, and none of 
the subjects had ever handled balls in this way except 
as the baseball and tennis player may occasionally 
throw a ball or two into the air and catch them as they 
come down. All the subjects did the work in the after- 
noon. In the few instances in which a change of hour 
was necessary, this fact was recorded. The total time 
occupied in the testing (and this testing constituted 
also the sole training of the subject) was various in 
amount, extending from a few minutes in the early 
stages of practice to two or three hours toward the end. 
All the subjects knew their daily score, and they always 
kept track of their progress during each test as well as 
from day to day. This method has undoubtedly given 
results different from those that would have been ob- 
tained had the subjects been kept in ignorance of the 
score, but the plan was uniform throughout, and had the 
advantage of largely overcoming the effect of monotony 
which usually depresses those who are obliged to prac- 
tice continuously for so many days. Besides, it enabled 
observation to be made on the effect of competition 
both with one's own record and with that of others. 

The throwing and catching of the regular tests was 
with the right hand (all the subjects were right-handed), 
but in order to ascertain the effect of right-handed 
practice upon the skill of the left hand, a preliminary 



172 MIND IN THE MAKING 

test was made upon each subject, on the first day of 
his practice, of his untutored skill with the left hand. 
This preliminary test consisted of ten series as usual; 
and after this the left hand was not again tried until 
after the completion of the whole period of work with 
the right hand, when the left hand was again tested 
and a record of its progress kept for a number of days. 

The daily training was continued in the case of four 
of the six subjects until the average number of catches 
for each series exceeded 100, or, what amounts to the 
same thing, 1,000 catches in ten series, for two days in 
succession. In the case of the other two subjects the 
training was broken off at a lower score for reasons 
that will appear later.^ The tests were made every 
day, including Sundays. 

Influences that Ajfected the Score. — It seems probable 
that the weight of the balls may have had an influence 
on the results on account of fatigue, and tennis balls 
would perhaps have sent the score up faster toward the 
end, when the number of successive catches at times 
exceeded two hundred. The essential course of the 
curve of progress would not, however, have been 
altered. 

At the beginning the height of the room proved to be 
an important element, and the one in which the ex- 
periments were made was high enough to allow suffi- 
cient freedom in this particular. 

The ball-tossing proved itself an unexpectedly del- 

• That even the lesser skill attained by these two was not bad seems 
evident when we find Hopkins saying that "the young man who can 
perform this operation twenty times without dropping one of the balls 
can treat the artist of the circus as a confrere." (Hopkins: Magic, p. 
140.) Hopkins possibly means, however, a young man who never fails 
to reach at least twenty catches, however often he may try. If this is 
the case, he is speaking of a degree of skill which was hardly reached by 
my subjects. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 173 

icate index of bodily and other conditions. Slight 
changes in physical condition, or in the temperature and 
illumination of the room, often produced noticeable 
effects upon the score. This resulted in marked un- 
evenness in the records from day to day, but did not 
influence unfavorably the general features of progress 
in which we are here most interested. Indeed, some 
of these disturbing elements are present at intervals in 
every learning process, and the importance of taking daily 
records of the progress in such work, instead of week by 
week, is apparent when we notice the great variations 
in skill through which most of the subjects passed. 

The most frequent evidences of lack of skill in the 
earlier days of training were "wild throwing" (the 
tossing of the ball in such a way that it fell out of easy 
reach), and clumsy catching, i. e., not being able to 
capture the ball when it touched the hand. As the 
subjects progressed somewhat, another source of failure 
appeared in the collision of the balls in the air, the 
ascending ball striking the descending one and knock- 
ing it out of reach. In the final stages trouble of this 
sort was again less frequent. 

None of the subjects gave any preliminary thought 
to the manner in which they might best acquire the 
knack of handling the balls, and this led to individual 
peculiarities of method, and ways of avoiding or meet- 
ing the common difficulties. One subject found him- 
self very early in his practice avoiding collisions by 
tossing the balls up a little to his right and in such a 
way that they would take a circular course, coming 
down in front of him. This method was most success- 
ful in avoiding collisions. Two others fell into the 
way of tossing the balls up at nearly arm's length in 



1100 



1000 




THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 



175 



front, so that they took a circular course toward the 
subject, coming down closer to his body. The objec- 
tion to this method was 
that the balls tended to 
fall too near the catcher, 
and so constantly crowd- 
ed him back. The other 
two kept the balls in 
parallel columns a foot 
or so apart, and a little 
to the right of the median 
line of the body. With 
this method the balls fell 
into a "mix up" periodi- 
cally, and then the sub- 
jects were obliged to toss 
high until they could 
straighten out the tan- 
gle, when they would set- 
tle down again into the 
same parallel columns, 
but only to have the ex- 
perience of trouble re- 
peated in course of time. 
The same was also true 
in a measure of the cir- 
cular throws. 









/ 












/ 






1000 
900 
















r 


yht He 


nd 












700 
600 
600 
400 
300 
200 


Left 


Hand 






























h 










V 










/ 








'/^ 


/ 


CL 


RVE 


E 


< 


y 











10 



15 



20 



25 



In the execution, the eyes and attention were upon 
the balls in the air, indeed, upon them in the upper 
half of their course. Both the tossing and the catching 
were effected with the hand, for the most part, outside 
the field of vision and of attention. 

Results. — While full numerical data are at hand, it 



176 



MIND IN THE MAKING 



1100 
1000 
900 
800 
700 


















\ 






Ric 


ht Ha 


idj 










/ 


























600 


L6ft 


Hand 
1 














I 






400 




A 


1 








/\ 




/ 






300 




^ 


"j 


\- 






200 


-f 


/ 


L 


CL 


JRVE 


F 


100 


/ 


/ 










Jr. 


r 










< 


>y^ 














e 


I 





1 


5 2 


25 



1100 
JOOO 
900 
800 
700 
600 
600 
400 
300 
200 
'100 











1 






















1 






i 








1 
















\ 


URV 


E G 









5 10 15 

has seemed to the writer that the essential features of 
the results could be made more easily intelligible by 
diagrams than by tables, and he has accordingly 
plotted the accompanying curves. All the curves are 
plotted in the same way and upon the same scale. 
Vertical distances show the number of balls caught; hori- 
zontal distances, the successive days. The lower curves 
at the extreme left present the progress of the left hand. 
Discussion of the Results. — The curves just presented 
have certain characteristics in common. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 177 

1. In general, the curves are concave toward the 
vertical axis, which means, of course, that the progress 
was first slow and then more rapid. It is altogether 
probable that all of the curves would in the end sweep 
more rapidly to the right and show a stage of slow 
progress as the physiological limit of skill in such 
matters was reached, but none of my subjects ap- 
proached that limit. 

2. All the curves show great irregularity of ad- 
vance. Progress is never uniform but always by jumps. 
The learner seems to make no gain for several days, 
or even longer, then he takes a leap, perhaps to get a 
good grip and stay, or may be to drop back a little. 
But if he loses his hold it is not for long, and he soon 
makes this higher level his starting-point for new ex- 
cursions. 

A growing feeling of confidence usually preceded a 
permanent rise. The subjects felt that they were 
"going to do it." 

There are not one or two special periods of delay in 
progress, giving a "plateau" or two in the curve, as 
Bryan and Harter found in their study,^ in which 
successful coordinations are made automatic. In- 
stead, there are many, the number varying with dif- 
ferent individuals, and automatization is going on dur- 
ing the entire learning process. Miss Shinn found this 
same irregularity in the attempts of her little niece to 
learn to walk. 

3. The average skill, holding at first somewhat 
closely to the lowest throw, was gradually drawn away 
from it by the growth in skill that revealed its reach in 
the highest throws. Though the lowest throw did not 

» Psychological Review, Vol. VI, 1899. p. 345. 



178 MIND IN THE MAKING 

rise much above those of preceding days, the number 
of low throws continually decreased. The lowest 
throws are more frequently the result of accidental con- 
ditions than the highest. While the latter is always 
above the learner's usual ability at a given time, it none 
the less shows the direction in which he is moving, and 
its height on any day bears some relation to his rate of 
progress. That is to say, though the learner may not 
on the following day reach the level of the highest 
throw of the preceding day, he will shortly attain it and 
make it, in turn, the basis for further advance. 

Some Conditions that Influence the Learning Process 
in Ball-Tossing. — It has already been mentioned that 
efficiency is greatly affected by physical condition. It 
is well known that physical experts of all sorts must 
keep themselves in condition, else they will drop into 
the class of inferior men. The influence of this factor 
was evident in all of the subjects. One subject, not 
represented in the curves, who made the exceptionally 
high score of 2,155 catches in ten series during the 
April holidays, had taken a long walk into the country 
on the morning of that day. On the following day, 
when his score dropped to 1,359, he had been working 
at his desk all the morning and did not feel fresh. Every 
catch required greater effort. 

Sometimes the lowered vitality is not apparent to the 
individual himself. G, who threw three balls with two 
hands, made a score of 730 catches on his fifth day, 
and when he began on the sixth felt confident that he 
would make his first thousand. But, instead of this, 
he fell to 431. After starting, he found that he could 
not control his muscles. What had been easy the day 
before was now done only with the greatest effort, and 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 179 

at the conclusion of the day's trial he was in an un- 
controllable tremble. 

Probably the "off days" that all subjects had belong 
here. These differed from the days when they were 
simply unable to reach the high score of the previous 
day. Sometimes they felt no confidence in their power 
to do any sort of good work, though they could give no 
reason for the feeling. At times "warming up" freed 
them from this feeling, but again even the lower scores 
required much greater effort, amounting in some cases 
to an exhausting strain. 

'^ The correctness of the curves obviously depends upon 
the uniformity of the effort put forth by the subjects. 
It is commonly assumed that the maxinmm effort is a 
constant factor for a given individual, and that the only 
thing needed to secure it in a conscientious subject is to 
interest him in the work and then ask him to do his 
best. While I have no reason to doubt the conscien- 
tious effort of my subjects and the practical uniformity 
of the average effort of each from week to week, the 
matter is perhaps of sufficient general importance to 
the precision of psychological experiments to justify a 
brief discussion of it. Even a direct interest in the 
results of an investigation, aided by the no less effective 
acquired interest aroused by the professional advantage 
from a well-worked-out problem, will not enable the 
experimenter himself to make a steady maximum effort. 

In the ball-tossing the influence of this element was 
less noticeable on account of the use of the voluntary 
muscles and because of the counter-effect of the sub- 
jects watching their own progress and of competing 
with others. -.But even here unintentional relaxation 
became evident now and then by comparison with the 



180 MIND IN THE MAKING 

intense effort put into the work at other times, as, for 
example, in the last half when the score of the first 
half was found lower than the subject had hoped for. 
Anderson also found ^ that in strength tests every man 
but two "failed to equal his best record when tested 
apart from the other members of the class," and John- 
son observed^ the same thing in tapping experiments. 
Yet it is easier to hold ourselves to steady intense effort 
in feats of muscular skill and strength than in many 
other activities, because of our mastery of the voluntary 
muscles. 

This lack of energy, due to waning interest, probably 
has much to do with delaying the learner's progress 
and increasing the length of "plateaus." One cannot 
escape a dead level in uninteresting work, and after the 
enthusiasm that novelty stirs has spent itself the in- 
terest is dulled and effort slackens. 

But the slow progress is frequently only an apparent 
one, due to our inability to measure the advance. It is 
a case in which figures tell only a part of the truth. In 
these experiments, when the curve showed little or no 
rise, it was evident both to the subjects and to the ex- 
perimenter that they were still making progress, and 
the proof of it, aside from unmeasurable observation, 
was the occasional high throws. In such cases the 
curve remained stationary because the imperfect train- 
ing had not enabled the subject to meet the chance 
emergencies that were constantly arising. 

But the matter of interest is still more complicated. 
In ball-tossing, after one has reached a fair degree of 
proficiency, the first part of each series is always some- 

' American Physical Education Review, Vol. IV, 1899, p. 265. 
' W. S. Johnson: Studies from the Yale Psychological Laboratory, Vol. X, 
1902. p. 81. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING ISl 

thing of a bore till the fifty mark is passed, when it be- 
comes interesting. Later, the interest may take an- 
other slump, rising again after the score has reached 
one hundred. At this point the possibility of an un- 
usually high score keeps the subject alert to the end. 
There was also a plateau in the interest of some of the 
men, after throwing, for the first time, a hundred in a 
single trial, for which they had been very keen. They 
felt that it was impossible to reach the two hundred 
mark at once, and the total thousand was too far off 
to be alluring, so the edge of their enthusiasm was 
turned. Later, when the chance to make another 
record seemed good, they became as alert as ever. 
Indeed, after the satisfaction of having thrown a hun- 
dred had subsided, and the work continued for a time 
without great progress, the first twenty-five took on an 
acquired interest in the anxiety to finish the work. 
This brought greater care. 

The confidence that follows a successful series of 
throws proved of considerable value, unless it led to 
the carelessness of over-confidence. Faith in one's 
ability to get out of a desperate situation in the tossing 
increases with success. This leaves the attention im- 
perturbed, and one does not "go to pieces." 

A long period of delay often represents the physio- 
logical limit with a particular method of tossing, and 
a rise is made only by the introduction of an improved 
mode of procedure. This was especially noticeable in 
C, who caught at first with the hand high in the air and 
the palm forward and almost perpendicular. This high 
catching seemed to be a sub-conscious accommodation 
to the position for throwing. The balls, of course, 
glided down his hand before he could seize them, and 



182 MIND IN THE MAKING 

he made practically no advance until he held his hand 
lower with the palm turned upward. This improve- 
ment, which necessitated the further change of keeping 
the balls at a distance from his body, was consciously 
adopted on the thirty-third day, and at that time a new 
rise began. The general flatness of C's curve is doubt- 
less due to the fact that he never played ball when a 
boy. 

F, on the other hand, on the third or fourth day, 
found himself tossing the balls up at nearly arm's 
length to the right, and in such a way that they took a 
circular course and came down in front of his body. 
In this way collisions were avoided. The plan entered 
upon unconsciously was then consciously adopted, and 
as a result of finding a successful plan early in the work, 
his progress was rapid and his curve is the most regular 
of all. It may probably be regarded as typical for 
muscular feats in which there is no long-continued feel- 
ing around for a successful way of doing the thing, as 
when the learner is assisted by a good teacher. 

One of the subjects, not shown in the curves, tried 
pretty constantly not to adopt consciously any method, 
but to let everything take its natural course, and as a 
result his progress was slow but steady, without any 
high jump until near the end. His efforts in this 
direction did not, however, prevent his final approxima- 
tion to a regular method, though one less advantageous 
than that developed by F. 

We see in this the value of suggesting good ways of 
doing things while the learning is still in its early stages. 
If the learner goes on he will finally develop a plan of 
his own, but only after a good deal of wandering, and 
even then it may not be the best. But the suggestion to 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 183 

be effective should be given at the time when need for 
it is keenest, at the "psychological moment." It is 
then that its value will be felt/ 

In polo, golf, baseball, or football, "good form" is 
absolutely necessary for reaching a high degree of skill. 
It is the essential prerequisite for a good method. Move- 
ment and position become associated, and a change in 
the latter requires relearning the former. The physio- 
logical limit of bad form is low. 

In learning any complicated performance, we pro- 
gress by sections. That is to say, the cooperating 
movements improve separately. This leaves certain 
errors conspicuous when we are well along in the work. 
Indeed, the whole learning process seems to consist in 
eliminating errors. First the obvious ones are dis- 
posed of, then new ones appear, and it is only after all 
have been overcome that the act can be regarded as 
mastered. 

In avoiding errors there was adaptation, apparently 
more subconscious than conscious, to conditions, and 
often it was so delicate as to elude observation. One 
of the subjects, for example, found himself tossing high 
in order to have time to recover from a difficult situa- 
tion, and at another time he caught himself putting his 
body into a more alert position by slightly raising him- 
self on his toes and making his muscles tense. Then 
he realized that he had been doing this for several days. 
So far as he could determine consciousness had no 
originating part in it. 

It is interesting that all the subjects improved by 
hitting upon better ways of working without any 

' Miss Shinn reports that her niece until six years old always ran flat- 
footed, but when she was shown the advantage of keeping her heel 
slightly lifted, she readily adopted it. 



184 MIND IN THE MAKING 

further conscious selection, at first, than the general 
effort to succeed. There seems to be a competition of 
methods. Just how this selection occurs without con- 
scious interference is not easy to say. Consciousness 
discovers modes of action already in use, and selects 
some of them for survival because of their success. 
They then pass into the automatic. In this way reflex 
movements may have first been conscious. 

Two learned to throw in less than half the time that 
the others needed, but their movements always called 
for a great outlay of energy. Economy of effort is an 
important element in effectiveness, but its acquisition 
requires time for the solidification of associations and 
for the elimination of useless movements, with the sub- 
sequent automatization of just those which are essen- 
tial to the process. 

A certain amount of "warming up" was usually 
necessary. While high throws were not confined to 
one part of the day's test, they rarely came at the be- 
ginning. Commonly, so long as the score was low 
enough to eliminate the effect of fatigue, the one or 
two high throws, after the warming-up period, were 
followed by a slump, which again yielded to high ones 
toward the end. This form of the daily curve was too 
common to be entirely a matter of chance. It is an- 
other case of the uncontrollable variation of the maxi- 
mum effort. Johnson,^ in his experiments on Practice 
and Habit, also noticed that his subjects could not 
get control of their muscles within the time of the 
preliminary tests. 

Bryan and Harter believe that it is intense effort 
which counts, and this is true, but with a qualification. 

I hoc cit. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 185 

Throughout this investigation it was clear that attempts 
to spurt were not effective. Indeed, the very effort in- 
terfered with success by making the attention too 
obtrusive. Special strain is itself a distraction, as John- 
son found at times. It is steady and calm intensity 
that makes for progress. The importance of strenuous 
effort lies in the fact that up to a certain point of in- 
tensity it is generally successful effort, and that is what 
counts, as Wood worth ^ and Johnson found. 

Fatigue from any cause not only brings a lowering of 
the day's score, but the entire process of learning is 
probably hindered. The growth of the nervous system 
into the required forms of activity has been disturbed. 
F felt that he was delaying his left-hand progress by 
practicing when fatigued from lectures, and a change 
of hour brought immediate results. 

In tossing and catching the ball a pretty general co- 
operation of all the muscles of the body is required, 
though those, of course, that cause the movements of 
the arm and hand are most directly involved. Of these 
the movements most prominent in consciousness are the 
general movements of the arm. The body movements, 
in most cases, do not come into consciousness at all, 
and the finer movements of the fingers and hands, ex- 
cept so far as they are covered by the general intention 
to toss and catch the ball successfully, are almost equally 
disregarded. As a matter of fact, however, skill in 
throwing and catching is rather more an affair of the 
fingers than of any other members. 

The question then arises. How are the necessary co- 
ordinations brought about? It does not seem difficult 
to bring the matter into line with phenomena already 

' Psychological Review, Supplement, No. 13, 1899. 



186 MIND IN THE MAKING 

pretty well known. Let us suppose a successful toss and 
catch are made. This is followed by a double effect; 
it leaves, as every action does, a trace in the nervous 
system which facilitates later repetition of the same 
action, and the successful adaptation also gives rise to 
a feeling of pleasure. The effect of pleasurable sensa- 
tion is a heightening of muscular tonicity or a general 
tendency to motor discharge, which in the case of an 
action just performed — one whose neural effects are 
still lingering — is equivalent to a partial reinnervation 
of the same coordinated group of muscles, which again 
deepens the existing trace. The next actual effort finds 
the nervous mechanism a little readier to react in this 
favorable way. In case of an effort that does not lead 
to success, the slight displeasure at failure exerts its 
natural depressant effect upon the whole neuro-mus- 
cular system, and this does not deepen the neural trace 
left by the original movement, and even, perhaps, 
breaks up the incipient coordinations that gave it its 
particular form. In any case, whatever its mode of 
action, it has not the reinvigorating effect upon the 
original neural trace exercised by the pleasurable sensa- 
tion. In the long run, therefore, the successful move- 
ments, and the coordinations upon which they depend, 
tend to persist, while those that are unsuccessful tend 
to fall away. 

Now it will be observed that this action of pleasant 
and unpleasant sensation does not depend at all on con- 
sciousness of the detail of the movements, and applies 
as well to a movement of which all the ultimate factors 
are subconscious and only the general end known. In 
such a movement, if the result is unsuccessful, a 
slightly different movement follows at the next trial. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 187 

that is, one in which the coordination among the mus- 
cles engaged is sHghtly altered, as an automatic result 
of the partial inhibition of ill-success. This new trial 
may be no better than the previous one, in which case 
it is again altered until success is reached or the attempt 
given up completely. In the case of movements, the 
details of which come more or less completely into 
consciousness, the same process goes on, but with more 
rapid progress toward the desired end, because the 
variations from which the advantageous movements are 
selected are not chance variations, but are from the 
start more or less perfectly suited to the requirements 
of the case. In the ball-tossing the general arm move- 
ments remain the prominent thing in consciousness, as 
we have said, while the finger movements are little 
noticed or quite neglected, and yet, nevertheless, the 
whole coordinated group is worked over, under the in- 
fluence of the voluntary movements, into proper ad- 
aptation for the successful performance of the feat. 

2. The Effect of Right-Hand Training upon the 
Skill of the Left Hand. — The subjects in this investiga- 
tion were all tested with their left hand, as already 
described, before the right-hand practice began, in 
order that the effect of right-hand practice upon the 
facility of the left hand might be determined. The re- 
sults of the left-hand tests before practice with the right 
hand are shown by the small circle on the vertical line 
to the left of the curves. The progress of the left hand 
in its subsequent practice is shown upon the same 
scale and in the same way as that of the right hand. 

Several things are at once noticeable. 

1. The record of the first day of regular left-hand 
training is in all cases higher than the preliminary test, 



188 MIND IN THE MAKING 

though in no case had the left hand been practiced with 
the balls during the interval. More than this, the 
score never drops to the level of this preliminary test, 
which shows that the gain was permanent. 

2. The left-hand curves bear a striking resemblance 
in general form to the corresponding right-hand ones, 
with this difference that in all but one case they ascend 
much more rapidly. A did in eight days with his left 
hand what his right hand needed thirty-eight days to 
accomplish. E made a left-hand record in four days 
that he had not been able to do in less than eleven days 
with his right. The difference with the others is not 
so marked, but in all cases the left-hand curve rises 
more rapidly than the right. 

3. All of the subjects made a better score with their 
left hand on the first day of its regular practice than 
they had been able to do with their right at the begin- 
ning of the work. 

F was delayed in his left-hand progress at about the 
middle of the work by physical and mental exhaustion. 

The conclusion is unavoidable that in the majority 
of cases the training of the right hand was somehow 
effective upon the left also. The same general result 
has been noticed by many observers engaged in dif- 
ferent lines of investigation. The chief point of in- 
terest is to discover how the effect is produced. Is it 
due to some purely peripheral change, or to some al- 
teration in the central nervous system, or, finally, to 
some method or plan of work that may be applied 
equally well in the case of either hand, as, for example, 
the knowledge of spelling which a man could use as 
well in writing in mirror script as in the ordinary way ? 
It is not impossible that cases could be found that 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 189 

would exhibit the cooperation of all three. In the ball- 
tossing there was evidence, certainly, of the last two. 
All the subjects were able to make use with the left 
hand of the methods of handling the balls, and of re- 
covering control of them after an ill-directed throw, 
which had been developed in the right-hand practice. 
In all the cases but one a good deal of a less conscious 
facility (of a sort that might indicate some kind of sym- 
metrical training of the .central nervous system) was 
probal)ly present. The subjects were able at once to 
build in the sub-structure of central (or neuro-muscular) 
skill, and so to learn the art of left-hand throwing much 
more quickly than the right. The mental element, 
the power to comprehend and meet a situation, is 
evidently, then, in most cases, the more difficult part 
of the complex muscular feats of skill, since the 
right hand, if taken first, needs so much more 
time for the learning than the left, notwithstanding 
its greater general facility in such movements in right- 
handed people. 

It seemed important, in this connection, to test the 
relative skill of the right and left hands of the several 
subjects in another manner, and for this purpose a 
target, approximately seven feet six inches in diameter, 
with nine concentric circles each about four and a half 
inches wide, was used. The test consisted in throwing 
one hundred balls with each hand from a distance of 
thirty feet. The bull's-eye was nine inches in diameter, 
and the balls used were such as have been described 
above. The following shows the success of the left 
hand compared with the right in percentages. C=45 
per cent., F=66 per cent., while A and E each gave 72 
per cent. If now we consider the skill of the right 



190 MIND IN THE MAKING 

hand, merely, estimating it by success in throwing at 
the target, we have the following order, beginning with 
the best, F, E, C and A. Again, arranging the sub- 
jects in the order of their left-hand skill, leaving the 
right hand out of consideration, we have, beginning as 
before with the best, E, F, A and C. 

To return, now, to the subject of left-hand training, 
it would be a mistake to suppose that such experiments 
in cross-education give support to the doctrine of 
"formal education." There is no evidence to show 
that training has general value. Indeed, it all argues 
strongly for the influence of content. Volkmann ' 
found that six months of regular practice in distinguish- 
ing small visual distances in which his eyes gained re- 
markable power, had no effect whatever on his ability 
to perceive small tactual differences. The right hand 
has had a great variety of training that ought to bring 
it along rapidly in ball-tossing on the principle of 
formal training, but this investigation shows just the 
reverse. The right hand learns it very slowly, but the 
special training that comes from doing a specific thing, 
enables the left hand, awkward and stiff as it is, to get 
control of the situation in about one-third of the time 
required by the right. Skill in certain lines may be 
serviceable in other similar processes, but its value de- 
creases as the difference between the kinds of work in- 
creases, and in many cases it is probably reduced to 
zero.^ 



• A. W. Volkmann: " IJber den Einfluss der Ubung auf das Erkennen 
raumlicher Distanzen. Berichte iiber die Verhandl. d. k. Sachs. Gesell- 
schaft d. Wissenschaften zu Leipzig," Math.-Phys. Classe, Vol. X, 1858, 
p. 38. 

2 R. S. Woodworth and E. L. Tliorndike: "The Influence of Improve- 
ment in one Mental Function upon the Efficiency of other Functions," 
Psychological Review, Vol. VIII, 1901, pp. 247, 384 and 553. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 191 



II. — TYPEWRITING 

Method and Conditions. — One hour each day was 
given to the test, and this testing, again, formed the sole 
practice of the subject. The number of words written 
during the hour was recorded, and from these daily 
records the curve of this learning process was drawn. 
The subject — the writer — kept track of his daily prog- 
ress, and this doubtless acted as a continual incentive 
to renewed effort. The writing was from copy, and 
at each test effort was continually made to maintain the 
maximum speed. The hour for work was in the after- 
noon. In a few instances university duties made a 
change of time necessary, but such variation in the regu- 
lar programme was always recorded and its possible 
effect upon the curve was considered. My physical 
condition, also, was carefully noted each day. Un- 
foreseen duties, coming immediately after the first day's 
practice, interrupted the work for the four following 
days, but during the remainder of the investigation 
there were only two interruptions, i. e., on the sixteenth 
and thirty-first days. These two interruptions were 
caused by indisposition. 

The typewriter used was a Smith-Premier No. 4. I 
had never used any kind of typewriter except to 
finger out slowly about a dozen short business letters 
two years before. It is doubtful if the number of words 
in all these letters exceeded five hundred. 

Preliminary Statement. — The number of words writ- 
ten during the hour is shown on the vertical axis and 
the days are on the horizontal. 

On account of the variation in the length of words it 



192 MIND IN" THE MAKING 

seemed best to control this possible source of error by 
also recording the number and parts of lines written 
during the hour. This was begun on the twenty-third 
day and continued without interruption until the end 
of the investigation. The resulting curve differed so 
little, however, from the one given below that its repro- 
duction here would be useless. The general course and 
form of the curve were unaltered. 

At the close of each hour's test a record was made of 
any facts that had a bearing on the curve. Typewriting 
is particularly adapted to introspection, as one is able 
to catch some of the fleeting processes that often escape 
detection when doing other things. These introspec- 
tions were also carefully noted at the time. 

Description of the Curve and Discussion of its Form. 
— The initial rise was clearly due to the ease with which 
a few imperfect coordinations and associations are 
learned, and to their effectiveness at this early stage. 
This rise is rapid in typewriting, because one quickly 
learns to locate letters on the keyboard with some degree 
of facility. 

The long drop on the fourteenth day was due, in 
large part at any rate, to harder "copy." Up to that 
time I had copied long personal letters, but on the 
fourteenth day the work changed to lectures on the 
history of education. The average length of the words 
was much greater, and there were fewer of the short 
words frequent in letters, which had come to be 
written with considerable ease. As the curve for this 
period shows, seven days were required to excel the 
highest record reached with personal letters. That the 
greater difficulty of "copy" was the cause of the drop 
was evident not merely from the immeasurable "feel- 



















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194 MIND IN THE MAKING 

ing" of greater effort with lessened result, but also from 
actual comparison of the two sorts of material. In one 
respect it is unfortunate that a change was made, since 
it breaks the continuity of the curve. But for the 
change the curve would probably have continued an 
upward serrate course. From another point of view, 
however, it is fortunate, since this unevenness of as- 
signed subject-matter often occurs in the class-room. 

The same irregularity from day to day that was 
noticed in tossing balls is apparent here. Retardation 
alternates with progress. In many instances no reason 
could be found for the drop. The record for the ninth 
day illustrates this. The notes for the day read, "The 
material was no harder than usual and I was in excel- 
lent condition." It is interesting to observe that on 
the same day I seemed to be doing as well as at any 
previous time. The only day when the low record 
could be accounted for by lowered physical vitality was 
the forty-eighth day. 

The period of enjoyment of the work coincided with 
the first rapid rise. The work was new and progress 
continuous. The mental depression caused by mo- 
notony and the first drop in the curve began about the 
same time. In the experiments on ball-tossing the same 
ennui was observed, and, at that time, it was thought to 
be an important factor in making or prolonging plateaus. 
The same feeling during arrest of progress here sustains 
this view, though the greater difficulty of this work may 
be an additional element in the retardation. 

III. — BEGINNING A LANGUAGE 

In selecting the language for this phase of the in- 
vestigation it was important to find one in which the 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 195 

learner's previous studies would be of least assistance. 
The Romance languages were, of course, excluded on 
account of their similarity to Latin. The choice finally 
fell upon Russian, because, while meeting the other re- 
quirements of an investigation, there are two fairly good 
beginners' books. 

The investigation was begun March 30, 1905, and 
ended June 14th. The experiment consisted of thirty 
minutes' study immediately followed by a fifteen 
minutes' test of reading ability. The daily preliminary 
study of thirty minutes was carried on in a perfectly 
natural way, the time being divided between the vo- 
cabulary of the lesson to be read in the test which was 
to follow, conjugations, declensions, and practice in 
reading review exercises, as the needs of the day sug- 
gested. 

In the investigations in the psychology of learning 
which we have discussed above, the subjects exerted 
themselves to their utmost to make a record, but this 
time, though every moment was utilized, there was no 
attempt to "spurt." The work in both the study and 
the test was done without strain, and for that reason 
the result is more nearly comparable with that of the 
school. 

The curve is based on the number of words read 
during the daily fifteen minutes' test. 

Certain rules of procedure were necessary, and the 
following were decided upon at the beginning, and 
strictly adhered to throughout the investigation. 

1. Proper names were not included in the count. 

2. When the same word was immediately repeated, 
so that the knowledge was directly carried from one to 
the other, the word was counted only once. 



196 MIND IN THE MAKING 

3. When an intelligible meaning could not be found 
for a sentence, the words were not counted. 

4. If, at the close of the test, a sentence was left un- 
finished, only those words were counted whose signifi- 
cance was clear in connection with the meaning of the 
sentence to that point. 

5. During the test the vocabulary of the lesson was 
covered with paper and not referred to until the at- 
tempt had been made to find the word in the general 
vocabulary at the end of the book, and also in the vo- 
cabulary of the reader. If the word was not found in 
either of these places, it was then sought in the vocabu- 
lary of the exercises for the day. 

The work of the investigation was the first thing 
undertaken in the morning. The subject (the writer) 
after reaching his office spent fifteen minutes looking 
over the morning paper so as to "cool ofi"' mentally 
after the half-hour's walk from his home. The same 
routine of daily life was carefully maintained through- 
out the investigation so as not to complicate conditions. 
Immediately after the test was finished the work was 
thought over, and any points that bore upon the in- 
vestigation were noted. The particular lesson and 
sentences entering into the test of the day were also 
recorded in order that their ease or difficulty might 
later be considered in interpreting the curve. 

The books used were Mott's Elementary Russian 
Grammar and Werkhaupt and Roller's Russian Reader. 
The exercise sentences of the grammar were taken in 
order first, and when they were completed the reader 
was begun. There was no skipping, except that when 
a sentence was not finished in the test of one day, the 
test of the following day commenced with the next 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 197 

sentence. The grammar work kept pace with the 
exercises to be read. As the exercise sentences were 
not numerous enough to call for more than one or two 
days on a single lesson, the forms could not always be 
thoroughly committed to memory. This was par- 
ticularly true of the verbs. The writer suspects, how- 
ever, that this is not very different from the condition 
of the average school-boy when he goes to his recitation. 

The test was made daily, with the exception of Sun- 
days, and the condition of the subject was always care- 
fully noted. 

I had never before looked into a Russian book and 
knew absolutely nothing about the language. As a 
preliminary preparation for the investigation two hours 
were spent in studying the alphabet. This time was 
distributed over four days, one half hour on each of 
these days being given to it. At the end of these four 
days the investigation took the form that has been 
described, one half hour of study followed by fifteen 
minutes of test. Aside from the two hours' study of 
the alphabet, the daily half hour of study was all the 
time that was ever given to the language, excepting, of 
course, the fifteen minutes' test, until after the comple- 
tion of the investigation. Only twice was help ob- 
tained, and then only in learning the meaning of two 
words whose irregularity made it impossible to find 
them in the vocabulary, and which were causing con- 
fusion by their frequent occurrence. 

The following curve was traced from the number of 
words translated each day during the fifteen minutes' 
test. The days are indicated on the horizontal base 
line, and the number of words read on successive days 
appears on the vertical line at the left. 



































































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198 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 199 

Description of the Curve and Discussion of its Fottu. 
—The high record of the first day indicates a certain 
control of letters, and marks the rise from zero knowl- 
edge. The lesson for this day consisted merely of 
words in the nominative case, which were found with- 
out delay, and two or three sentences so short and easy 
that the translation required no time when once the 
meaning of the words was known. 

On the second day noun cases entered into the work, 
and for this reason the words were not so readily found. 
A few of the real difficulties of the language for which 
knowledge of symbols was inadequate were now for the 
first time encountered, and so the score dropped. 

It will be seen from the curve that six days were 
needed to equal the record of the first day, and even 
then this level was not held. Indeed, even on the forty- 
sixth day, as the curve shows, the score dropped to 
twenty-two words, while on the thirty-fourth day only 
ten words were read. The reason for this low record 
appears from the notes for that day: "New words and 
obscure expressions prevented progress." 

In interpreting the significance of the great varia- 
tions in the curve, the sudden rises followed by an 
equally sudden drop, it must be remembered that I 
was handling a tool about which I knew very little. 
If the declension of the words in the exercises was 
regular, the work was likely to go smoothly, and the 
resulting score would be high. But if a case-form so 
irregular as not to be readily recognized appeared, the 
delay might be so great as to reduce markedly the score 
for that day. In such a case, however, the learner's 
knowledge would not be fairly represented by the day's 
record. This shows his deficiency rather than his 



200 MIND IN THE MAKING 

power. Ordinarily, even at that stage of progress, he 
would do better, as the subsequent, and in many cases 
also the previous, score shows. But as yet he cannot 
be depended upon in an emergency. His knowledge is 
still limited in quantity and superficial in quality. I 
was conscious of this, and it was not until about the 
fifty-third day that a feeling of moderate confidence 
arose. The notes for that day say, among other things, 
"the difficulties seem to be settling somewhat, but 
words are still hard to remember." 

The phenomenal rise on the sixteenth and nineteenth 
days seems to have been due, in part, to easier transla- 
tion material. The sentences for those days were re- 
spectively illustrative of the interrogative and negative 
forms of regular verbs and of demonstrative pronouns. 
The time for advance had probably come, but the rise 
was too great to be ascribed solely to the proficiency 
acquired. Thirty-four days of study were needed be- 
fore that height was reached again, and to the end of 
the investigation it was not permanently held. All of 
these noticeably high records that were not made again 
for some days, indicate that the learner had temporarily 
overshot his permanent power, and, as will be shown 
later, time was needed to perfect the automatization. 
The same fact was observed in the investigation of 
ball-tossing and of typewriting. 

New words, not given in the vocabulary, and ob- 
scure expressions, caused the exceptionally low record 
of the thirty-fourth day. 

The rate of measurable progress at the beginning was 
much slower than in learning typewriting. This is 
seen in the length of time that passed before a much 
higher level than that reached during the first few days 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 201 

was permanently gained. The ascent is not so sudden 
nor so continuous as in typewriting, and for that reason 
the curve is more nearly of the concave type. The 
reason for this is that in typewriting all the symbols were 
partially learned at the start, and the remainder of the 
time was given to automatizing this knowledge. In 
Russian, however, each day added new words and new 
grammatical forms. Then, too, since the test-exercises 
for a given day dealt especially with the subject-matter 
of the lesson, what had been learned in the past did not 
count greatly toward the translation. The grammar 
work, with its test sentences, was finished, and the 
reader begun, on the forty-third day, and from that 
time the rise was less interrupted. 

The general form of the curve will be more clearly 
seen in the smoothed curve marked by the heavy line. 

Discussion of the Results in the Light of Introspective 
Notes. — It will be seen from the curve that there are 
three periods of manifest advance, and four "plateaus," 
the last plateau coming at the end of the investigation. 
Since plateaus seem to indicate that the learner is 
making no progress, their real significance is a matter 
of considerable interest. In this investigation, as in 
the experiments on ball-tossing and typewriting, "high- 
er-order" habits made their appearance early in the 
work. At first they were fugitive and not easily de- 
tected, but very soon one or two became sufficiently 
permanent to be clearly observed. It was noticeable, 
however, that extreme sensitiveness to conditions 
marked even this latter stage. A slight fatigue, or any 
mental disturbance whatever, drove them away, and 
the subject at once sank to the level of "lower-order" 
habits. It would seem from this investigation, as well 



202 MIND IN THE MAKING 

as from those which we have just discussed, that the 
difference between earUer and later stages of the learn- 
ing process does not consist in the absence, in the 
former, of "higher-order" habits acquired only after 
those of the "lower order" have become automatic, but 
rather in the predominance of "lower-order" habits 
during the earlier stages of the work and the gradual 
self-assertion of those of a "higher order." Both kinds 
of habits were in process of formation almost from the 
beginning, and, as the investigation ended before any 
great proficiency in the language had been acquired, 
both were conspicuous to the close. Introspection 
made it clear, however, that very early in the work, 
perhaps on the second or third day, a few common 
words of two, and possibly, in a few instances, of three 
letters were recognized at sight, while all others had to 
be slowly pronounced before they could be recognized, 
and that, too, regardless of the number of times they 
had already been seen. As the ability to recognize 
words at sight is a "higher-order" habit, at least when 
compared with the need for slow and labored pronun- 
ciation, it will be interesting to trace its growth. On 
the sixth day the notes read, "with the exception of 
common words of two and, in a very few instances, 
three letters, no word, however many times it may have 
appeared, is recognized until orally or mentally pro- 
nounced." Again, the notes for the next day say that 
"in two or three instances words previously requiring 
pronouncing were recognized at sight." By the ninth 
day this power had increased so that "two or three 
reasonably long words were recognized at sight." 
Among them were the verb meaning "to speak," and 
the noun for "boy." The following day this list was 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 203 

increased by the words signifying "to play," "cat," and 
"with." Still, notwithstanding the early appearance, 
and, at the outset at least, the seemingly rapid growth 
of this power, throughout the entire investigation words 
that had appeared many times, and, on occasions, had 
been recognized at sight, would require pronouncing, 
and even then, in many instances, the meaning would 
not come. Again, visualization of words, also one of 
the "higher-order" habits, was observed on the fourth 
day. "To-day for the first time," the notes say, "I 
was able to get the faintest suggestion of a visual image 
of two or three words that I was learning to decline." 
The increase of this power, while exasperatingly slow, 
was nevertheless noticeable. The fact that the writer 
is, in general, a poor visualizer naturally retarded the 
growth of this power. 

The curve would seem to indicate that during the 
plateau periods no progress is being made, but careful 
observation of himself, in this investigation, and of 
pupils and students at their work, has convinced the 
writer that there is unquestionable progress at this 
time, only it is of such a nature that it cannot be meas- 
ured, and so does not reveal itself in the curve. What 
is going on during these periods of apparent arrest is 
important in the psychology of learning and an emi- 
nently practical question for education. The cue for 
the interpretation seems to be given by the periods that 
are dominated by the feeling of mental confusion. 
These, in general, correspond to the plateaus of the 
curve. New factors in the study accumulated too 
rapidly for immediate assimilation. Until they had 
become reasonably automatic, visible progress was im- 
possible. On the twenty-first day, for example, just 



204 MIND IN THE MAKING 

at the beginning of the long plateau, I find in my notes 
that " a more or less ill-defined mass seems to be settling 
down upon me. It looks as though time were needed 
for this turgid fluid to settle." It is a mistake, though, 
to assume that the learner is making no progress dur- 
ing this time. He is getting knowledge, and it is 
gradually assuming a more orderly arrangement; but 
it cannot affect the curve, except at irregular intervals, 
until it has acquired a certain effective force. The leap 
forward indicates that the automatization has improved 
and the power needed for further advance has been 
gained. Sometimes this becomes evident to the learner 
before the advance is made, as on the forty-seventh 
day, at the end of the long plateau of which we have 
been speaking, when I wrote, "I have a feeling that my 
score will jump soon." 

Closely connected with the fact that the automatiza- 
tion of so-called "higher-order" habits is contempo- 
raneous with that of the "lower order" is the observa- 
tion that the progress of an automatization once started 
is not continuous. The mind matures irregularly. It 
has long been known that in children interests follow 
one another because of the difference in the time of the 
attainment of functional maturity by the several parts 
of the brain. Probably this is only one phase of the 
more extensive principle that the acquisition of power, 
like the growth of the mind in general, is always by 
sections. The underlying reason is physiological. 
Where it is not a matter of actual brain growth it is one 
of structural organization — the opening of new paths 
of nervous discharge and their habituation to automatic 
functioning. In the investigation of typewriting this 
irregularity was observed in the growth of word-asso- 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 205 

ciations and of position-associations (location of the 
keys by muscular sense), and in this investigation it 
was seen in the variation of the power to recognize 
words without pronouncing them, in the ability to 
visualize words, and in the knowledge of different 
classes of words. At times it seemed as though no 
progress were being made in one form of automatiza- 
tion, while in another the advance was by strides. 

As in single automatizations, so also in the general 
forward movement, progress is never steady, but 
always by leaps, preceded by longer or shorter periods 
of apparent cessation of progress. There is a gradual 
but irregular growth in the intelligibility of the subject- 
matter in hand, while interspersed within the period of 
general advance are days when uncertainty and con- 
fusion dominate. When in the latter condition, the 
learner feels that the whole thing is hopeless. A few 
sentences taken from the notes of successive days will 
illustrate this. On the sixteenth day they say, "The 
language seems to have taken on somewhat more in- 
telligibility"; but the following day I "did not ex- 
perience the same ease as was felt yesterday." The 
next day "things went quite easily," and this same feel- 
ing of ease continued through the nineteenth day; on 
the twentieth, however, "the difficulties were numer- 
ous," and the following day saw no improvement. It 
will be noticed by referring to the curve that this is 
about the beginning of the long plateau, and the notes, 
in each instance written immediately after the test to 
which they refer, also indicate a period of apparent 
arrest of progress. On the twenty-second day, the 
next in order, this becomes still more evident. The 
notes now run: "Words and forms have been accu- 



206 MIND IN THE MAKING 

mulating so rapidly lately that the feeling of confusion 
which seemed to be disappearing a few days ago has 
returned. It is the old chaotic feeling that character- 
ized the early part of the work. Still, it is not quite so 
overwhelming as it was at that time." Again, on the 
following day, "everything is chaotic." By the twenty- 
seventh day, however, "the confusion is less disturbing. 
The elements of the language are taking on a little 
order." But the change was only temporary, as the 
notes do not indicate any permanence in the improve- 
ment until the forty-second day, when "things seemed 
to go pretty well." From this time the notes give evi- 
dence of an increasing feeling of certainty, as on the 
fifty-third day, when, as the notes say, "the difficulties 
are becoming somewhat differentiated and less con- 
fusing," and on the sixty-fourth, when " the translating 
begins to seem a little more natural." 

In the experiments on ball-tossing and typewriting, 
monotony was found to be an important factor in the 
rapidity with which skill was acquired, and the same 
condition was observed in this work. Periods of 
monotony alternated with periods of pleasure in the 
work, and, at times, of keen enthusiasm. While, as 
has been said, it is not probable that the depression 
associated with the monotony caused the plateaus, it 
seems quite reasonable that it prolonged them. Gen- 
erally, though not always, this feeling of discourage- 
ment corresponded with the plateaus of the curve, and 
it is an interesting fact that returning pleasure and con- 
fidence sometimes prophesied a new advance. 

Conclusions. — It is the common factors of these sev- 
eral types of learning that are of chief importance for 
present consideration. 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 207 

The effect of the physical condition should, perhaps, 
be mentioned first, because the complex nature of many 
learning processes makes the detection of its influence 
exceedingly difficult. The strictly mental subjects of 
study conceal its effect, because of the difficulty of iso- 
lating it from the many possible sources of disturbance, 
amid the perplexities of the subject-matter and the con- 
ditions of work. For several weeks a child has not been 
keeping up to his former standard. Is his failure due to 
some physical disturbance, or to his inattention in class, 
or neglect of study, or deficiency in the elements of 
knowledge upon which the work of the last weeks de- 
pends ? It is difficult in many cases, if not impossible, 
to determine. But in acquiring proficiency in a physi- 
cal act of skill, where the learners are old enough to 
eliminate inattention so far as volition can do it, and 
where they are profoundly interested in the outcome of 
the work and have already acquired a degree of skill that 
bars out deficiency in the elements as a possible factor 
in their failure, the effect of physical condition on their 
progress is more easily discerned. The experiments in 
ball-tossing satisfy these conditions, and the influence 
of the physical tone was frequently observed by all of 
the participants. That the effect of this factor, how- 
ever, is not limited to one type of learning is shown by 
the conspicuous examples cited in the preceding pages. 
One of the first results of lowered physical tone has 
long been known to be loss of nervous control over the 
small muscles. As success in keeping two balls in the 
air with one hand depends chiefly upon the delicacy 
of small movements, it becomes an unusually sensitive 
measurer of the subject's physical state. In type- 
writing it was the newly forming group-associations 



208 MIND IN THE MAKING 

that first showed the effect of the fatigue. The learner 
was reduced to the condition with which he started, i. e., 
writing letter by letter. Word-associations which en- 
abled him to strike the letters of a word without being 
conscious of them singly, and position-association by 
which he "felt" the location of the keys without seeing 
them, were in complete abeyance. Under similar con- 
ditions a child who, in learning to read, has advanced 
so far as to recognize words at sight without spelling 
them would be reduced to the spelling stage. When 
we remember that it is the latest acquisitions, those 
that mean most for the learner's progress, which first 
feel the effect of lowered physical tone, the significance 
of the problem for education and brain improvement 
becomes apparent. 

Progress in learning, as we have seen, is never con- 
tinuous. It is a gradual and irregular growth from a 
condition of mental uncertainty and confusion to one of 
automatic certainty. The learner always advances by 
jumps. For a time there seems to be no progress. This 
condition may continue only a few days, or it may last 
several weeks. Both teachers and pupils are discouraged 
because they do not understand that this is one of the 
characteristics of the learning process. Suddenly, and 
sometimes without premonition, the diflSculties clear, 
and the learner leaps forward. Frequently he jumps 
a little farther than his present powers justify, and then 
he falls back again; but if so, it is only for a short time. 
The sudden advance is the precursor of the general 
forward movement that is to follow. 

The periods of no-progress occupy by far the greater 
part of the learning process. Advances are momentary, 
and then there is likely to be another delay. When a 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 209 

curve of learning is traced these periods of arrest are 
seen as "plateaus," and since they are the most con- 
spicuous part of the curve their significance for educa- 
tion becomes an exceedingly practical question. Bryan 
and Harter are of the opinion that "a plateau in the 
curve means that the * lower-order ' habits are approach- 
ing their maximum development, but are not yet 
sufficiently automatic to leave the attention free to at- 
tack the 'higher-order' habits," and that "the length of 
the plateau is a measure of the difficulty of making the 
Mower-order' habits sufficiently automatic."^ All of 
the investigations of the writer have sustained his first 
conclusion that there is no separation of "lower" and 
"higher order" habits into different periods. Both 
sorts of habits are present very early in the work, and 
the automatization of both is going on all the time. 
The difference between the early part of the work and 
any subsequent period is rather in the prominence of 
one or the other class of habits. Naturally the learner 
begins with the lowest order of habits. He is dealing 
with the elements of the subject-matter, and he handles 
them in isolation, in a purely mechanical way. In a 
very few days, however, some of the simpler instances 
of "higher-order" habits are discerned, and from that 
time they become increasingly prominent in the work. 
It is a gradual growth from a state when "lower- 
order" habits predominate to a condition of predom- 
inant "higher-order" habits by which the mind deals 
with elements in groups as symbols of ideas instead of 
in detail as elements of the group. In typewriting, 
for example, word and location-associations were de- 
tected early in the work, gradually replacing those of 

> Psychological Review, Vol. VI, 1897, p. 345. 



210 MIND IN THE MAKING 

letter and sight. What, then, is the significance of 
plateaus ? Considered from the point of view of visible 
progress they are resting places, but from the side of 
automatization of associations they are most active 
periods. The learner has reached the limit of his 
present power and must wait until automatization is 
perfected. As will be shown later, they may be pro- 
longed by a slump in enthusiasm. Monotony is likely 
to overcome the learner. After improvement in 
automatization the learner is able to do better and 
takes courage. Enthusiasm to advance, now that it 
is easier, overcomes the irksomeness. 

Educationally, plateaus have great significance. 
They are the mind's protest against further cramming, 
and instead of trying to hurry pupils over them, as 
teachers are prone to do, they should be recognized 
as essential to the learning process. But, while plateaus 
are evidently a distinctive feature of the learning proc- 
ess, it is no less certain that they are unnecessarily 
increased in number and depressingly prolonged by 
the rapidity and looseness with which previous work 
has been gone over. The shakiness of the foundation 
work is the cause not only of many of the plateaus but 
also of the failure of studies to take such a hold of 
pupils that work in them ceases to be a grind. The 
method which should be followed during these periods 
of retardation becomes evident from an analysis of 
their nature. The subject-matter should be recon- 
structed and reorganized, so that the automatization 
may not be too mechanical and stereotyped. But in 
it all the purpose must continually be in mind to 
bring order out of the confusion that, among other 
things, the arrest of progress indicates. Ability to 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 211 

strengthen the foundation knowledge and at the same 
time to avoid the equally grave danger of monotony is 
one test of a good teacher. Examinations given during 
periods of retardation — the plateaus of the curve — do 
not in any way show the progress of the learner. For 
this reason tests of proficiency should always be given 
at a time when the pupils have been showing special 
proficiency for a few days, when they are well along in 
the upward movement of the curve. Since the prog- 
ress of different children does not coincide from day 
to day, the disadvantage of class examinations is ob- 
vious. 

Monotony seems to be one of the unavoidable ob- 
stacles in all learning. It is a phase of the mind's in- 
ability to continue attentive to the same object. At 
the start a new subject of study is interesting. This 
is due to its novelty, and, in addition to this, progress 
at the outset is rapid. The acquisition of the first ele- 
ments is easy, and the rise from zero knowledge is so 
quickly made that the mind enjoys the transition. For 
the moment, each day brings something new. But very 
soon some of the difficulties of the subject-matter be- 
come obtrusive. The superficial grasp of a few ele- 
ments that did very good service at first, when every- 
thing was simple, no longer meets the requirements. 
The details have greatly increased in number and their 
loose connection is easily broken. As a result they 
soon fall into confusion. It is necessary to go back and 
make another start, and so the novelty that stimulated 
the interest in the beginning comes to an end. Delay 
is now necessary, at least in many subjects of study, 
that reaction to some of the elements of the work may 
be automatized. This is the first plateau of the curve. 



212 MIND IN THE MAKING 

But the monotony is probably not the only cause of 
the retardation. That lies in the nature of the learn- 
ing process. The loose hold on the first principles of 
the subject was sufficient to bring the first advance, but 
now the complications have increased, and to under- 
stand their relations requires attention. The mind must, 
therefore, be released from supervision of the simpler 
elements with which it has hitherto been occupied. Re- 
sponse to these simpler elements must become a habit, 
with the execution of which the learner is wholly un- 
conscious. Though the feeling of monotony does not 
cause this arrest of progress it doubtless tends to pro- 
long it, and to lessen its effect is one of the problems 
of teaching. Diversity of material, as well as new 
ways of presentation, are now important, and the time 
is suitable for showing the larger implications of the 
topics under discussion. The difficulty is greatly in- 
creased by the fact that the necessary retardation, by 
reacting upon the mind, tends to prolong and increase 
the feeling of ennui. The ball-tossing experiments 
were especially suited to the observation of the changes 
in the attitude of the mind toward the work. The 
feeling of monotony during the early part of each trial, 
always noticeable in those who had gained a certain 
proficiency in ball-tossing, suggests a similar feeling in 
children who are compelled to sit and listen to explana- 
tions of topics which they clearly understand, and 
points to the individualization of instruction as the 
line of educational advance. It was observed by those 
engaged in these experiments that the possibility of 
doing something to beat their own record was the 
surest antidote for monotony. This would, naturally, 
be even more characteristic of children than of adults, 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 213 

though in these investigations it was found to be ex- 
ceedingly strong. 

It is suggestive that in all these experiments the 
method by which the reaction was improved was hit 
upon unconsciously. The learner simply tried to do 
the thing upon which he was working, and, in the proc- 
ess, he found himself using an improved method, and 
the new acquisition was always well along before it 
was discovered. This was particularly evident in the 
ball-tossing and in typewriting, and, while it was more 
difficult to detect in learning Russian, there was every 
reason for believing that it was operative here also. 
In order to test this matter further, the writer has since 
tried the experiment of learning to handle a punching 
bag skilfully, and here also it was quite clear that all 
of the delicate movements by which the bag is made 
continually to rebound, with a rapidity that the eye 
cannot follow, were happened upon quite uncon- 
sciously. There is a subconscious utilization of ex- 
perience. How this is brought about without the par- 
ticipation of consciousness is a difficult question. Ex- 
perience certainly seems to play an effective part in 
the life of organisms so low in the scale that few are 
willing to credit them with consciousness, at least in the 
usual acceptance of the word. "Behavior having the 
essential features of the method of 'trial and error,'" 
according to Jennings,^ "is widespread among the 
lower and lowest organisms, though it does not pass in 
them so immediately to intelligent action." Now, as 
Professor Jennings points out,^ actions of this type 
necessarily involve the ability to distinguish "error" 

1 Contrihulions to the Study of the Behavior of Loioer Organisms, by 
Herbert S. Jennings, p. 237, Carnegie Institution, Washington, 1904. 

2 Lac. cit., p. 250. 



214 - MIND IN THE MAKING 

from "success." But while the improved ways of 
doing a thing come unconsciously, those that survive 
do so for a reason, and that reason is a conscious one, 
and in this lies a part of the educative value, in its 
intellectual aspect, of manual training and of play. 
The child finds himself doing a thing in a certain way, 
and the question of its success comes before him for 
decision. The value of constructive play as a factor 
in development is an unworked educational mine. 
The author has learned of a boy of about fourteen who 
worked out a complicated system of military tactics 
with cards as soldiers. It was not merely "playing 
soldier." He read about military manoeuvres, and 
planned flanking movements and retreats, introducing 
rivers and woods, and so was dealing in play with 
many of the problems of real war. This was distinctly 
an intellectual training. 

Returning now to the nervous system, its subcon- 
scious utilization of experience may be accounted for 
by the organic friction that accompanies unsuccessful 
reactions. Though, in the cases under discussion 
consciousness did not participate in the first selection 
of successful methods, the mind was, nevertheless, 
conscious of success or failure. The repetition of 
successful movements, i. e., those that contribute to 
the success of what the mind is consciously seeking, 
results, as we have seen, in an organic contentment 
which heightens the neuro-muscular tone and favors 
their repetition. This subconscious satisfaction is 
parallel to the conscious satisfaction that comes with 
recognized and intended success. 

The effect of fatigue on progress in learning has 
never been adequately tested, most of the experiments 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 215 

having been made with mental processes which have 
already become automatic. While these investigations 
were not undertaken primarily to test the effect of 
fatigue, there was frequent opportunity to observe its 
influence, and the evidence that it is disastrous to the 
finer acquisitions which characterize growth in skill 
and knowledge was decisive. In ball-tossing it was 
the delicate movements that suffered, while in the more 
strictly mental activities it was the higher forms of as- 
sociations. 

Closely connected with the subject of fatigue, par- 
ticularly in its relation to school children, is the ques- 
tion of the sort of practice that is effective for progress. 
It seems quite clear from these investigations, as the 
writer has already said, that it is not mere practice that 
counts for progress in learning, but successful practice.* 
Consideration of the factors in the process would seem 
to sustain this view. Learning is the automatization of 
certain activities, and any disturbance of the organic 
tone, whether comparatively permanent, as in lowered 
physical condition, or temporary, as in fatigue, inter- 
feres with the automatization. When erratic im- 
pulses are interpolated, incipient habits, always sen- 
sitive in their beginning, are deranged. Practice, then, 
instead of being carried to the point of eimui or fatigue, 
should always cease while the learner is still fresh and 
enthusiastic. The books of school children should be 
closed the moment there is any indication of lassitude. 
Carried beyond this point, study tends to delay prog- 
ress by starting erratic impulses that end in confusion. 

Throughout these investigations the significance of 

> See also R. S. Woodworth's "The Accuracy of Voluntary Movement," 
Psychological Review Supplement, No. XIII, 1899. 



216 MIND IN THE MAKING 

the time element in learning was continually em- 
phasized. From its very nature progress cannot be 
continuous. The accumulation of details of the sub- 
ject-matter brings frequent periods when a certain 
length of time is needed for difficulties to adjust them- 
selves, and until this mental organization is com- 
pleted the facts are not readily usable. It is probable 
that no amount of work would make progress con- 
tinuous. Up to a certain point increased effort during 
periods of arrest of progress may shorten the delay, but 
effort to the point of mental strain, at such a time, is of 
more than doubtful wisdom. The mind does its share 
toward mental clarification if the material is put clearly 
before it, but time is always needed if the organization 
is to be the best of which the mind is capable, or if the 
resulting acquisition is to be permanent. In the study 
of typewriting this question was experimentally tested, 
and it was found that effort to "spurt" did not bring 
the desired result. Indeed, the exertion seemed rather 
to interfere with the automatization of associations and 
movements. Time is needed, and time the mind will 
take. Overstrain and hurry tend to mental confusion 
rather than to clarification. 

Equal amounts of work do not produce equivalent 
results. Throughout these investigations this fact has 
been continually forced upon the writer. Many times, 
when the effort put forth seemed unusually successful 
and he felt that it must markedly raise his score, the 
result would fall far below what had been accomplished 
at other times. To account for this solely by a differ- 
ence in the difficulties to be overcome does not satisfy 
the conditions. Difficulties are always relative, and 
become wholly negligible in the presence of mental 



THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING 217 

organization which comprehends the situation. We 
have here one phase of the time element involved in 
learning. 

By far the greater part of the learning period is spent 
on plateaus, when both teacher and pupil, failing to 
understand the situation, feel that they are marking 
time. Now the most interesting thing about this is the 
almost paradoxical fact that these periods of retarda- 
tion are the time when the real progress is being made. 
Relations between details are now being worked out, 
and the associations growing out of this process are 
becoming automatized. These are the crucial days in 
the work, and any attempt to shorten the process arti- 
ficially is almost certain to bring disaster. In learn- 
ing, as in development generally, one period grows out 
of another, and the success of later associations and 
automatizations depends upon the accuracy and effective 
force of those that were formed before. Americans 
who spend several years in Germany pass through a 
long period of discouragement. Though they study 
the language faithfully, and avail themselves of every 
opportunity to practice conversation, they seem to make 
absolutely no progress. The length of this plateau- 
period varies with different persons, but all experience 
its oppressiveness. Now the most curious feature of 
this plateau, aside from its overpowering monotony, is 
the suddenness with which it finally disappears. Sev- 
eral have told the writer that they went to sleep one 
night unable to understand anything, as it seemed to 
them, and utterly discouraged, and awoke the following 
morning to find that they had mastered the language, 
that they could understand practically everything which 
was said to them. The word-associations and national 



218 MIND IN THE MAKING 

peculiarities of thought sequence had been automatized 
during the long period when no visible progress was 
being made. The daily study counted for so little in 
comparison with the mass of possible words and idioms, 
that the partial acquisitions made from time to time 
could not assert themselves. Before this was possible 
it was necessary that the accumulation be great enough 
to give them effective force. The process by which 
these acquisitions were automatized was largely sub- 
conscious. Time, with patient, steady work, seems to 
be what is needed, and little immediate manifest effect 
should be expected. The manifest advance, that which 
is revealed by the curve or by examination marks, 
which is the same thing, is discouragingly brief. These 
sudden leaps forward are merely transitions from one 
acquisition period to another, and indicate that the 
details upon which the mind was working have taken 
on a certain order and that new ones may now be added. 
A great part of the improvement of brain consists in 
growth in power to understand relations, and it is during 
the periods of retardation that the processes, out of 
which a correct interpretation comes, are active. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 

Man is a better thinker than the animals below him 
because the precarious conditions which surrounded 
his early progenitors, by demanding new adaptations, 
opened the way for a fresh start in cerebral organiza- 
tion. Geological and climatic changes made the op- 
portunity, and capacity to vary in response to emer- 
gencies was equal to the requirement. All thinking 
ends in action; this is its evolutionary justification, 
and man in the course of his development has become 
a better thinker in order that he might act in a manner 
more consistent with the needs of the situation. In a 
large sense all actions are of the reflex type, since their 
excitation may be traced finally to external stimuli. 
From the side of intelligence the question is, What goes 
on between the arrival of the stimulus and the action 
which it prompts? In animals with a very simple 
nervous system action immediately follows the excita- 
tion. With a better organized nervous system some 
delay may occur, while in the higher animals, and par- 
ticularly in man, the process of selection becomes 
greatly involved. Man has no more avenues for re- 
ceiving impressions from the outside world than are 
possessed by many of the lower animals. His mental 
superiority consists in his ability to work up much more 

219 



220 MIND IN THE MAKING 

completely the crude information received through his 
sense organs. The organization of the human brain 
with its enormous number of association-fibres gives 
its possessor a distinct advantage over animals with a 
less highly evolved central nervous system, and it is 
just this improved nervous organization which gives 
man his intellectual preeminence. Man can act better 
because he can think better, and he can think better 
because he has a more highly evolved brain. There is 
no reason for believing that the average size of the 
human brain has increased for many thousand years. 
Indeed, there does not seem to be any clear relation 
between the size of the brain and intelligence. As a 
result of the examination of two hundred and eleven 
crania gathered from widely separated parts of North 
and South America, Morton found that "we have the 
surprising fact that the brain of the Indian in his savage 
state is far larger than that of the demi-civilized Peru- 
vian, or of the ancient Mexican tribes," * and Tiede- 
mann, after examining skulls of people from almost all 
known regions of the world concluded that, so far as 
size of the brain enters into intellectual capacity, 
primitive races do not differ essentially from Euro- 
peans.^ Bischoff, also reports that the brains of 
four Pelew Islanders gave an average of 1,402 grams, 
with the lightest 1,361 and the heaviest 1,474 grams.^ 
He also found a Bengal's brain which weighed 1,531 
grams. The average weight of the brain of modern 
civlized man does not greatly exceed 1,400 grams. 

' Samuel George Morton, In Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge of the 
Indian Tribes of the United States, edited by Henry R. Schoolcraft, Vol. 
II, p. 330. 

* Das Him des Negers mit dem des Europaers und Orang- Outangs ver- 
glichen, p. 48. 

' Theodor L. W. von Bischoff: Das Hirngeioicht des Menschen, p. 82. 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 221 

Huschke * makes it 1,424 grams for man and 1,273 
for women. Hrdlicka examined an Eskimo's brain 
which weighed 1,503 grams. "As a whole," he says, 
"this Eskimo brain is heavier and larger than the 
average brain of white men of similar stature." ^ 

After the human brain attained approximately its 
present size, its further evolution seems to have been 
chiefly confined to improving its internal organization. 
Charles L. Dana found no special peculiarity in the 
brain of a full-blooded Bolivian Indian, but the relative 
difference in the size of its several parts, as well as the 
local variations in fibre-mass, led him to conclude that 
the brain " was a better motor and sensory than think- 
ing and talking organ." ^ Kaes * believes that in the 
second and third association layers of Meynert he has 
found the part of the brain in which, during the progress 
of civilization, improvement especially occurred. It is 
certainly suggestive that the areas which he thinks are 
preeminently the region of race cerebration, coincide 
with those in which he also seems to have discovered a 
new growth of association-fibres, beginning in civilized 
boys and girls at about eighteen years of age. Both 
Kaes and Vulpius agree that these same second and 
third layers, which the former is convinced are deficient, 
among primitive people, in association-fibres, are un- 
developed in children. But still earlier in life the lack 
of organization goes much farther. The acts of new- 
born infants are reflexes of the simplest sort — spinal 
reflexes — because, at this time, the cerebrum is isolated 

' Emil Huschke: Schadd, Him und Seele des Menschen und der 
Thiere nach Alter, Geschlecht und Rasse, p. 57. 

2 American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. Ill, p. 454. 

' Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, New Series, Vol. XIX, 1894. 

* Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. XLV, 1895, pp. 1734 and 
1770. 



222 MIND IN THE MAKING 

from the lower centres. Increase in the number of 
brain-cells probably ends about four months before 
birth, and henceforth growth in intelligence depends 
upon the healthy development of the immature cells 
and the growth of nerve fibres to functional maturity. 

The child begins life at the spinal level of intelligence. 
Nerve-impulses take the short circuit from periphery 
to cord, where they are transmitted, either directly or 
through very few commissural cells, to motor cells, and 
action follows reflexively. Since the cerebrum has not 
yet been connected with the nerve-circuit, all that the 
cortical centres mean for the future intelligence of the 
individual is a matter of development during infancy 
and childhood. The evidence indicates that at first 
the nerve-centres act without much reference to one 
another. Inhibition is absent and control is erratic. 
There is no coordination in movements. Inhibition, 
serial order, and control are for individual acquisition. 
The nervous structures are inherited by the race, but 
each individual must learn how to use them. 

Since life consists in reactions to impressions made by 
external conditions and events, the nervous system must 
be connected with the surface of the body, and the in- 
telligence of organisms is then measured by their sen- 
sitiveness to slight variations in these impressions and 
by their ability to bring them into some consistent rela- 
tion, so that the bearing of past impressions upon those 
now sensed may be understood and may facilitate an 
adequate interpretation of the confronting situation to 
which the organism must react. This is the utilization 
of experience. 

Briefly sketched, the central nervous system may be 
thought of as made up of afferent and efferent fibres 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 223 

with their sensory and motor cells, and of commissural 
cells which elaborate and, through their fibres, dis- 
tribute impulses arriving over afferent nerves. Shortly 
before birth, meduUation, which began in the sensory 
nerves at the level of the cord, has advanced through 
the medulla as far as the cerebral cortex. All fibres 
of the cord are now ready to function, with the exception 
of the pyramidal tract — the direct motor pathway from 
the cortex into the cord. This is the voluntary motor 
tract, and as voluntary movement is not yet possible, 
the cerebral structures not having been developed, 
there is no need for the pathway. Probst's studies ^ 
have shown that cortical cells are fully three months 
behind those of the cord. It is the reflex centres which 
are immediately needed by the child. 

At birth the various structures that later assume 
certain very definite functions have not yet come into 
existence. The cells are homogeneous and function is 
undifferentiated. The intricate system of association- 
fibres, which enables the different senses to contribute 
toward the interpretation of sensory data and, with 
memory, makes possible the utilization of past ex- 
perience, has not yet become functionally active. It 
is usually not nature's way to create in a moment in an 
individual what has taken her ages to elaborate in the 
race. These fibres will appear later, and as the several 
paths are opened the mental life takes on a new color- 
ing. Somewhere here, and in the cells from which they 
spring, the distinctively human lies concealed. The 
fundamental difference between the immature nervous 
system and that of the adult is the lack of organization 
in the former. It is the difference between compara- 

' Gehirn und Sede des Kindes, 1904 



224 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tively simple and marvellously complex machinery. 
The so-called higher mental processes do not appear in 
the child because the structures necessary for them are 
not yet formed, and they are not formed because the 
needs of human life cannot well be met by ready-made 
machinery. So long as requirements are satisfied by a 
fairly definite response to a given stimulus, the nervous 
mechanism can be handed over at birth nearly or quite 
complete, but when, as with man, great variability in 
response is demanded, time is needed for growth and 
development. 

The appearance of the cerebrum in the nervous cir- 
cuit marks the beginning of the larger intellectual life. 
The nervous impulses starting at the periphery, which 
up to this time have passed almost directly into motor 
neurones of the lower centres, now take a wider circuit. 
The first cerebral fibres to become medullated, accord- 
ing to Probst, are those connecting the cortex with the 
thalami, the cerebral continuation, as Edinger finds, 
of the spinal sensory path, whose fibres are the first in 
the cord to become functionally active. Sensory im- 
pulses are now no longer limited to the spinal nervous 
elements. The range of nervous action is enlarging. 
In the individual, as previously in the race, new centres 
for control develop as need for them arises, and with 
increase in the complexity of organization the nervous 
system is brought into more intimate relation with the 
outside world. It receives more incentives to action 
from its environment, because its capacity for sensation 
has been increased and its environment enlarged. In- 
terpretation of stimuli plays a larger part in its re- 
sponses, and experience begins to be effective in the 
choice between several possible reactions, and so re- 



THE RACIAL BEAIN AND EDUCATION 225 

sponse, which hitherto has been restricted within nar- 
row Hmits, and, in a degree at least, determinable, now 
becomes incalculable. 

As these changes are going on during the formative 
period, the inference that they may be influenced by 
education is not unreasonable. The factor of chief im- 
portance in development through education is the 
nature of the excitation. In lower animals instincts 
peculiar to the species may not appear until called out 
by exciting stimuli, and there is every reason for as- 
suming for man a similar need of appropriate excita- 
tion. The belief that children, if allowed freedom, will 
find in their environment what is needed is a good 
working principle. The error in it is that environ- 
ments difi'er, and naturally the elements which they 
lack cannot be obtained from them. City life, depriv- 
ing children, as it does, of workshops, woods and 
fields, does not contain the ingredients that in the 
country act as exciting stimuli for many racial instincts 
which are believed to be of supreme importance in 
brain development. 

In the organization of the nervous system, proceed- 
ing as it does from birth, the axons and dendrons put 
out branches that in turn send out finer, and these 
still finer, fibrils, which facilitate the passage of nerve- 
impulses. The higher animals stand in the scale of 
intelligence the more their nerves branch. Profusely 
branching cell-fibres, besides furnishing more paths 
for a given impulse, aid in the nutrition of the entire 
nervous system, and give an opportunity for modifying 
impulses to influence the action of a nerve-current. 
Education, then, from the physiological side, would 
seem to consist in conserving and elaborating the cen- 



226 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tres for nervous energy, and in opening new paths of 
discharge. The branching fibres of the nerves over 
which incoming impulses arrive are not in permanent 
contact with the branches of the receiving dendrons. 
Just how the varying responses of the organism to 
similar stimuli are to be explained is not certain, but 
that it is made possible by organized nervous centres 
and by the ramification of fibres cannot be questioned. 
The increase in the variety of responses with the increase 
in the complexity of the nerve elements is evident when 
we consider rac.-s and men of low intelligence. Their 
reaction to a given stimulus is more easily determined 
than is that of those of high intelligence. The latter 
find modifying elements in the stimulus, as other pos- 
sible ways of viewing the object or event, and the im- 
pulses to which these give rise play their part in deter- 
mining the path which the first impulse shall take as 
well as its intensity. For those with poorly organized 
brains there is but one possible response to a given 
stimulus, and this response follows the excitation im- 
mediately. Those with better organized brains see 
below the surface. They consider causes and effects, 
and so find new and richer meaning in that which occa- 
sions the excitation. Through these inhibiting and re- 
enforcing impulses springing from other senses or from 
nerve-centres, the more primitive and native course of 
a nerve-impulse is changed, and deliberate action 
results. It is a mistake, however, to assume that this 
grows naturally out of the nature of the nervous sys- 
tem. Truly, to reenforce and inhibit action is a nervous 
function, but to vary the one or the other because of 
some slight change in the conditions indicates superior- 
ity in the evolutional scale, and, among individuals at 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 227 

the same level, the delicacy of this power is a, test of 
their discriminative intelligence. Now much of this lies 
within the province of education. It is a phase of 
brain improvement. 

In early infancy the projection fibres push their way 
from the central white matter into the cortex, while, 
about the fourth month, association-fibres running 
parallel to the surface of the brain make their appear- 
ance in the inner and outer cortical layers. A few 
fibres are to be seen also in the middle layer as early as 
the eighth month, but they do not occur here in great 
numbers until the seventeenth or eighteenth year, when, 
according to both Kaes ^ and Vulpius ^ they begin a 
new growth. This is the layer that is largely made up 
of the second and third association-layers of Meynert, 
the growth in complexity of which, as we have seen, 
Kaes thinks may make the difference between primitive 
and civilized man as well as, in some degree at least, 
between children and adults. In childhood this entire 
middle cortical layer is noticeably deficient in associa- 
tion-fibres, but after the new growth of the latter teens 
has begun, they increase in numbers rapidly, and at 
about thirty-eight, as Kaes' investigations show, they 
are twice as numerous as at eighteen. The discovery 
that the growth or medullation of association-fibres con- 
tinues so much longer than has been commonly sup- 
posed, is decidedly significant for education. Kaes and 
Vulpius agree that their medullation continues beyond 
forty years, and perhaps fifty. At any time, then, be- 
fore middle fife, nutritional disturbance of any sort 
may interfere with fibre-development. It is quite cer- 

• Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. XLV, pp. 1734 and 1770; 
Miinchener medizinische Wochenschrift, Vol. XLIII, p. 100. 
^ Archiv fiir Psychiatric und Ncrvenkrankheiten, Vol. XXIII, p. 775. 



228 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tain that, at least in parts of the brain, the number and 
complexity of functionally active fibres varies with age, 
and the opinion that there is a definite relation between 
intelligence and fibre-growth, which a more accurate 
knowledge of the finer structure of the brain may 
reveal, can no longer be thought unreasonable. So 
well established is the continual appearance of new 
association-fibres that Edinger ^ thinks the intellec- 
tual capacity may be increased by the improvement 
of cerebral organization by perfecting paths already 
formed, and, perhaps, through starting a new growth 
of these association-fibres. It is probable that many 
of these structural changes occur among the dendrons. 
That these are both phylogenetically and ontogenetic- 
ally of later growth than the axis-cylinder processes, 
and that they are more numerous in the nervous system 
of higher animals, indicates that their appearance and 
numerical increase mark epochs in the growth of in- 
tellect. Cajal " believes that man's higher psychical 
powers cannot be accounted for by the morphology' of 
the cortical cells or by their grosser connections, but that 
the explanation must rather be sought in the marvellous 
richness of the interrelations which the cell elements have 
assumed during the evolutionary process. So far as mere 
connections and variability of cell types are concerned, 
the cerebrum, he says, is far inferior to the cerebellum 
and retina. While accepting the prevailing view that 
brain training cannot increase the number of cells, Cajal 
strongly inclines to the opinion that the number of proto- 
plasmic processes and collaterals may be increased, and 
in this way the associational reach may be enlarged. 

' Bail dcr neri-bsen Zentral organ e, 7th ed.. Vol. I, p. 329. 
= Archiv fiir Analomie, 1S93, p. 319. 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 229 

If Kaiser's * investigation of the increase in the num- 
ber of developed cells in the cervical enlargement of 
man is indicative of the increase in the cerebrum, they 
double between birth and fifteen years of age. Don- 
aldson ^ is of the opinion that in the cortex this growth 
may continue even till the fortieth year, and measure- 
ments of the head at different ages seem to indicate 
this. West ^ found from his examination of 2,800 
pupils in the Highland Military Academy and Worcester 
(Mass.) Normal and public schools that their heads 
continued to grow till twenty-one years of age, and 
Venn ^ concluded from his measurements of the heads 
of more than 2,000 Cambridge (England) students that 
the human head increases in size for some years after 
the age of nineteen, and Galton ^ supports this conclu- 
sion. 

As the sole source of the mature nerve-cells in the 
brain of the adult is the undeveloped cell-elements 
present at birth, the future brain development consists 
in the change of these original cell-elements into func- 
tionally active cells, and in their improved organization. 
Von Kolliker ® considers the nerve-cells as the sole seat 
of psychical activity. The total productive efficiency of 
this activity would, of course, involve the perfection 
of their grouping. Intellectual capacity depends in 
large measure upon the number of functionally active, 
vigorous cells, and the perfection of their physiological 
organization and development in both of these direc- 
tions may unquestionably be furthered or impeded by 

' See Donaldson's Growth of the Brain, p. 164. 

2 Ibid., p. 165. 

' Archiv fur Anthropologie, Vol. XXII, pp. 13-48. 

* Nature, Vol. XLI, 1890, p. 452. 

' Ibid., p. 165. 

' Handbuch der Geweblehre des Menschen, Vol. II, p. 677. 



230 MIND IN THE MAKING 

environment and education. That no brain ever 
reaches his highest attainable degree of efficiency 
seems certain from the fact that large numbers of un- 
developed cells are always found in the brain of adults. 
The condition is much the same, only less accentuated 
and not necessarily in the same localities, as in those 
who have lost the use of one or more sense-organs in 
childhood. Donaldson, for example, found that "the 
number of granules and partially developed cells was 
excessive in the defective portions of the cortex of the 
blind deaf-mute Laura Bridgman, in whom normal 
development in those localities ceased at the end of the 
second year of her life" ^ through loss of vision and 
hearing. In mental defectives the condition is still 
more marked. Hammarberg ^ examined the brains of 
a number of persons in different stages of weak-minded- 
ness, and in all cases he found the cells defective in 
size and number and vitality. It would, of course, be 
unreasonable to expect to find all of the cortical cells 
fully developed in a normal individual, but intelligence 
being the result of the activity of the entire brain, any 
large number of rudimentary cells would seem to 
indicate unrealized powers. A child begins life with 
certain native endowments which have been inher- 
ited from his immediate ancestors, or from those 
more remote. That there are limitations to his 
possible brain growth cannot well be doubted, but 
that these limitations are as restricted as is often 
assumed is improbable in the light of our present 
knowledge. 

"Von Kolliker, in a discussion of the physiological 

> Donaldson's Groicth of the Brain, p. 240. 

» Sludien iibcr Klinik und Pathologie der Idiotic, Upsala, 1895. 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 231 

functions of the elements of the brain, says that all 
nerve-cells possess in the beginning essentially the same 
function, and that the manifestation of function de- 
pends entirely upon the manifold external influences 
or stimuli which affect them, and upon the many possi- 
ble modes of responding to these excitations." ^ It is 
probable that the modes of responding to excitations 
grow with the opportunities to respond, provided these 
opportimities are of the right kind. The protoplasm 
becomes enriched and the cellular connections are mul- 
tiplied by the growth of innumerable nerve branches, 
collaterals and fibrils. In this way the nervous paths 
already formed are strengthened and new ones made. 
Other things being equal, the greater the number of 
intercellular connections, the greater the intellectual 
power, and it is beyond question that these intercellular 
connections increase according to the demand for 
them in the environment. 

Of great interest in connection with the relation of 
-intelligence to brain organization are the areas which 
have no motor or sensory function. If one takes a 
diagram of the brain and marks with black ink those 
parts that experiments have shown to be sensory areas, 
and with these also the regions whose electrical excita- 
tion produces motion, large areas — two-thirds in man 
according to Flechsig — will remain uncolored. These 
areas, Flechsig insists, are not connected, as are the 
sensory and motor regions, with the lower centres, but 
are association areas whose fibres bring neighboring or 
distant cortical centres into functional relation with 
one another. While there is as yet no convincing evi- 
dence that these "association areas" are the especial 

' Barker's The Nervous System, p. 256. 



232 MIND IN THE MAKING 

location of the higher intellectual processes, still the 
fact that they decrease in extent as we descend the 
animal series indicates an evolutionary significance. 
It may be that they represent the more plastic portions 
of the brain. 

Our knowledge of what is involved in cerebral or- 
ganization is at present wofully meagre. We are 
acquainted with only its most conspicuous features, 
but there is no reason for supposing the brain to be 
exempt from the conditions essential to the growth and 
development of other organs. Aside from analogy, 
however, there is abundant proof that the development 
of nerve elements is dependent upon opportunity to 
function. Appropriate nerve-excitation is not only 
nerve exercise, but in addition it promotes the metab- 
olism and growth of the cells in the stimulated cen- 
tres. The work of Seguin and his successors has 
demonstrated the possibility of improving mental 
function through cerebral activity caused by external 
stimuli. It is a matter of common knowledge that 
if a peripheral nerve, through disease or other causes, 
loses its power of functioning, degenerative changes 
are liable to occur which may affect not merely the 
nerve itself, but the cell in which it has its origin as 
well. Exercise is necessary for the proper nutrition 
of nerve-cells as well as of other organs, and if this 
activity is wanting the cell loses its sensitiveness to 
excitation. 

A rightly ordered system of education must grow out 
of the physiological requirements of the nervous system. 
In childhood the nerve elements are not rigidly set. 
They are flexible in the sense that their organization is 
to be largely determined by their environment, and the 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 233 

education that children receive in the school-room 
constitutes an important part of this environment. 
Associations may be formed that have no validity out- 
side of the unreal conditions in the teacher's mind, and 
as we are dependent in our thinking on the connections 
made in the brain by association habits, such associa- 
tions must prove disastrous to the child's mental de- 
velopment. 

Recent studies have brought out some facts bearing 
upon psychic processes that must, when clearly under- 
stood, profoundly influence education. 

The nervous system of the lower vertebrates is 
composed of separated ganglia more or less loosely con- 
nected. As we ascend the scale of animal life the 
ganglia are better connected; there is more centrali- 
zation. The human nervous system is decidedly 
centralized. But this is not all. Within this centraliza- 
tion there are all degrees of variation in the connection 
of adjacent and remote cell groups by associative fibres, 
and it is in this that the quality of education reveals 
itself. The higher mental activities, those involving 
thought and reasoning, grow out of the lower, and the 
supposition that they exist by and for themselves and 
that they can be matured irrespective of the lower proc- 
esses, springs from an absolutely false conception of 
psychic development. Spontaneous and reflex move- 
ments produced through the discharge of lower centres 
precede conscious movement. Indeed, they are the 
necessary foundation for consciousness. Willed action 
could never take place were it not for the sensations 
caused by these movements and left as memory images 
for future sub-conscious reference. 

The most sensitive parts of the body are those that 



234 MIND IN THE MAKING 

are most mobile, and according to Mosso * this in- 
creased sensitiveness is not due to a greater peripheral 
nerve ramification or to a more highly organized end 
organ, but to the fact that greater mobility has pro- 
duced a more irritable brain. In other words, move- 
ment develops the brain. This view is further 
supported by the fact noted by various writers that intel- 
ligence in animals increases with the increase in mo- 
bility of their extremities. "The cephalopods, which 
have eight arms, formed of muscle substance, and pro- 
vided with suckers, stand, among the molluscs, nearest 
to the vertebrates on account of their strength and 
power of movement. It was movement, probably, that 
developed their brain-ganglia, for these are larger in 
the cephalopods than in the other molluscs. As they 
possess a good memory and a high intelligence, so they 
also exhibit more intense emotions, as may be seen from 
the great facility with which the color of their skin 
changes." ^ Romanes also noticed the same relation 
between animals of high intelligence and movement of 
the extremities in grasping. The first human beings 
must have been dumb, and the increasing need for 
means of communication would have naturally led them 
to an excessive use of gestures, which are known to 
have preceded spoken language. In the brain develop- 
ment following the increasing frequency and com- 
plexity of these gestures, as man's need for varied ex- 
pression grew, may, perhaps, be found the origin of 
spoken language. The close connection between the 
centre for speech and the centre controlling the right 



1 Lecture before the Students and Faculty of Clark University, De- 
cennial Celebration, p. 390. 
^Ibid., p. 390. 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 235 

hand, is evident, as Colin Scott has shown, from the 
apparent increase of strength in the hand after the 
speech centre has been stimulated by declaiming. 
Baldwin has already suggested that right-handedness 
may have been the turning-point in passing from ges- 
ture to speech. The growth of movement has been 
from few to many and from simplicity to complexity, 
with corresponding increase in precision. This has 
not been due merely or even largely to change in mus- 
cles, but to the development of the brain resulting from 
more varied movement. "It is not the process of con- 
sciousness which makes our hands dextrous, but per- 
haps the movements of the right extremities, which 
effect the higher psychic development of the left cere- 
bral hemisphere. The influence of the hand upon the 
development of language is evident from the fact that 
an aphasic patient is made to write in order that 
he may gradually regain the power of speech." ^ In 
Mosso's^ opinion, the brain cells and fibres can be 
helped to mature in early childhood through muscular 
exercise. In this way the motor-nerve paths may be 
consolidated before intellectual work begins. 

The method of teaching generally followed to-day is 
directly antagonistic to the physiological needs of chil- 
dren. Instead of recognizing the demand of their 
organism for movement, they are put into seats where 
they meekly count wooden toothpicks, and educational 
experts read elaborate papers before tired teachers on 
the length of time children may be kept in their seats 
without permanent injury. 

The aim of teaching, we are told, is to impart knowl- 

> Mosso: Clark University Decennial Celebration Book, p. 392. 
2 Ibid. 



236 MIND IN THE MAKING 

edge, power and skill. By the present method we cer- 
tainly impart a kind of knowledge, but it does not stay 
long, and power and skill are at a decided disad- 
vantage. It is an attempt to develop the higher nerve 
centres without regard to the lower. We like to wave 
the achievements of our higher mental powers before the 
admiring crowd, and are not a little anxious lest their 
seemingly ignoble origin may discredit their present 
claims. Educational methods which encourage mem- 
ory and local or simultaneous associations at the ex- 
pense of connected thought and of reaching the inner 
meaning are worse than worthless. If we could remedy 
to-morrow the mistakes of to-day, though time would 
be lost, the harm would be greatly lessened. But every 
mental process leaves its trace in the nerve-cells and 
forever afterward exerts its influence in the intellectual 
life of the individual. Notwithstanding the great varia- 
tion in cell development of which every brain is capable, 
the elaboration of the protoplasm and intercellular con- 
nections, which alone bring this development, is left 
largely to the chance activity that information laid away 
in the cells as memories may arouse. 

In the evolution of the nervous system the phylo- 
genetically oldest is the first to become set. There is 
little, if any, chance for variation in the inherited struc- 
ture and mode of action of the nervous elements of the 
cord and medulla, or even in some of the other centres 
of comparatively later origin. They represent a stage 
in development when survival required that certain 
things be done in a pretty definite way. These activi- 
ties are no less fundamental than when they were the 
physical basis of the highest of which the organism was 
capable, and during many ages there has been no 



THE RACIAL BRAIN AND EDUCATION 237 

cause for any essential change in the physiological proc- 
esses underlying them. Racial heredity, therefore, 
hands over to us, ready-made, the nervous structures 
adapted to their performance. With the cerebral cor- 
tex, however, the situation is very different. So clear 
is the course of evolution here that we are able to test 
experimentally in animals the progressive assumption 
of function by the cortical centres,^ and with it the 
gradual improvement in bodily control and increase in 
intelligence. The cortex, however, still retains the 
capacity to vary. This is because it is the latest evolu- 
tionary achievement in the nervous system, and nature 
is always slow to cast the final mould and call her work 
finished. It is the cortex, therefore, that presents the 
possibility of individual improvement. But this very 
capacity for variation exposes it to the dangers as well 
as to the benefits of change. Reversion is always easy 
for newly acquired characteristics. Among the lower 
animals natural selection, if sufficiently intense, takes 
summary action in this matter and preserves the quality 
of the species. In human society the strict application 
of this selective force as found in nature is impossible 
and also undesirable, but this lack of external con- 
straint calls for compensation consciously adjusted, if 
the quality of brain is to be maintained. Individual 

' Steiner: Die Functionen des Centralnervensy stems und ihre Phylo- 
gmcse, Braunschweig, 1885 and 1898. Schrader: " Zur Physiologie des 
FroschRehirns, Pflilger's Archiv fur Physiologie, Vol. XLI, 1887, p. 75; 
"Zur .Physiologie des Vogelgehirns," Archiv fur die gesammte Physiologie, 
Vol. XLIV, p. 175; "Zur vergleichenden Phy.sioIogie des Grosshirns," 
Deutsche medizinische Wochenschrift, 1890, p. 306; "Uber die Stellung 
des Grosshirns im Reflex-Mechanismus des centralen Nervensystems der 
Wirbeltiere," Archiv fur experimenldle Pathologic und Pharmakologie, 
Vol. XXIX, 1891, p. 55. Munk: "Uber den Hund ohne Grosshirn," du 
Bois-Reymond's Archiv fur Physiologie, 1894, p. 355. Goltz: "Der 
Hund mit verkiirztem Ruckenmark," Pfliiger's Archiv fur Physiologie, 
Vol. LXIII, 1896, p. 362. Edinger's Vorlesungen uber den Bau der ner- 
vosen Zentralorgane. 1904, Vol. II. 



238 MIND IN THE MAKING 

deterioration must surely be easy if new cerebral tracts 
may be formed by brain activity. The purpose of edu- 
cation is improvement in action, and this presupposes 
better cerebration, and there is abundant evidence that 
the human brain is still in the process of evolution. 
The fact that certain functions may be vicariously per- 
formed by centres not usually concerned with them 
shows that, in the more recently gained characteristics 
at least, the brain has not become set. Now it is of 
the utmost importance that this plasticity be pre- 
served. INIodern psychology postulates that nervous 
activity underlies psychical activity, but it is incredible 
that a given group of cells, with their connecting fibres, 
should be exclusively concerned with producing one 
thought or one state of consciousness. Probably that 
is the tendency when a given form of thought becomes 
habitual, but habits of thought rest upon habits of 
nervous discharge. The man who thinks in ruts does 
so because a given idea always produces the same 
nervous discharge, and the resulting currents follow the 
same worn paths. Mental efficiency does not depend 
merely, nor even chiefly, upon the amount of nervous 
energy available. It is a matter of nervous reciprocity, 
of coordinated impressionability and action. Abundant 
energy may exist, but go to waste in uncoordinated dif- 
fusion. This is seen in young children who are learning 
to write, and in those who are older, in their efforts at 
control of the attention. The intellectual helplessness 
of high-school pupils and college students is evidence 
of the failure of our tutelary method of education to 
create habits of control of nervous discharge. 



CHAPTER VIII 

EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 

A few years ago there were found scattered through 
the four lower rooms of one of the St. Louis grammar 
schools sixteen children, who for various reasons had 
not succeeded in doing one quarter's work during a 
period varying, with different children, from one to 
two years. They ranged in age from eight to ten. 
Some were naturally backward ; others had been ir- 
regular in attendance; one, Frank, was a chronic 
truant. To insure an occasional day at school, a mem- 
ber of the family would lead him by the hand into the 
school-room. The tears in his eyes betrayed how un- 
willingly he had come. 

These sixteen were grouped in one class and as- 
signed to an especially observant and thoughtful teacher. 
She found she must begin with work ordinarily done by 
children at about their eleventh week in school. Their 
stolidity was the teacher's despair; she would have 
hailed disorder or mischievousness as signs of life. As 
it was, they seemed intellectually to differ from logs 
only in the fact that now and then they responded by 
a nod. Their grasp of number enabled them to show 
how many ears one cat has, but they were unable to 
extend their calculation so far as two cats. The teacher 
concluded the story of her difficulties with this class by 

239 



240 MIND IN THE MAKING 

saying that from the way in which they used their 
hands one would infer that they were much younger 
than they really were, there was such weakness and 
lack of control in their movements. This, with their 
lack of ideas, made the thought of their writing during 
seat-work time an absurdity. Hence it was decided to 
introduce some simple form of hand-work. 

As constructive work was not a part of the course of 
study there was no means of obtaining suitable ma- 
terial for manual training, and so the simplest and most 
inexpensive work, spool knitting, was chosen. Zephyr 
of various colors was supplied by the teacher, and the 
children brought their own spools and ordinary pins. 

It was soon found that the zephyr was beyond their 
control. The weakness of their fingers, the small pins, 
and the inability of the children to hold the zephyr so 
that the loop about the pin would remain loose enough, 
made it impossible for them to proceed. The teacher 
then gave them split zephyr. This proved manageable. 
For the first time their faces lighted up when they saw 
the cord projecting beyond the lower end of the spool. 
They grew animated enough to talk, and would ex- 
claim, "See! it's coming through!" 

The children were left free to use the color they 
wanted and to change to another when they chose. 
They worked at their knitting during seat-work periods 
whenever they had finished other allotted tasks. 

One child, a little stronger than the rest, succeeded 
in using the heavier zephyr. The others, noticing the 
larger and firmer cord that resulted from the use of 
this zephyr, now wanted to try again what before had 
proved too hard. 

From the day that spool-knitting was begun attend- 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 241 

ance improved. Frank, the former truant, did not miss 
a day. Later he was taken ill with scarlet-fever. 
During his convalescence his mother was puzzled to 
explain why he should now be so unhappy at not being 
allowed to go to school. Another child, whose mother 
wanted to take him down-town to get a pair of shoes, 
said, "Oh, I can't miss school to-day; we're going to 
have a new color for our knitting." 

After having worked for some time with no other 
stimulus than the pleasure in the immediate result, the 
children began to compare the length of the cord made 
by themselves with that of their neighbors. It was 
then suggested that each find just how long his cord 
was. The use of the yard-stick and the foot-rule now 
became interesting. One boy discovered that he had 
four feet, or one yard and one foot of cord; another, 
that he had a yard and eighteen inches. 

The consciousness that they could do something with 
a tangible result awakened a certain degree of self- 
respect. They grew more responsive in the ordinary 
school studies. It became a little easier to appeal to 
their imagination, and slowly but gradually they 
learned to tell a story to their classmates. Even prob- 
lems in arithmetic came to have some meaning to 
them. 

It was now evident that spool-knitting had served 
its purpose and must be superseded by something that 
would appeal afresh to their interest and make greater 
demands upon their skill. Old slate frames were 
turned into looms by putting a row of tacks along the 
ends. Wool for weaving was obtained from the ravel- 
lings of small pieces of ingrain carpets bought at the 
carpet house by the pound. 



242 MIND IN THE MAKING 

At the start the teacher was obHged to string the 
warp herself. The children chose their own colors as 
before. At first a color for the second stripe was chosen 
simply because it pleased the child while he held it in 
his hand. Later, he would carry it to his seat to see 
how it would look alongside the color of the first stripe. 
Then some discovered that it made the little rug look 
pretty to go back to the color first used, and thus came 
a recognition of the value of repetition and of the effect 
of stripes of different widths. 

By the end of the term the children had learned to 
make rugs and hammocks, and to knot fringes and 
twist cords for the hammocks. On the last day of the 
half-year, all the mats made of the knitted cord, the 
rugs, and hammocks were arranged along the wall at 
one side of the room. While the children sang their 
morning song, Frank, in the front seat, sat, with his 
hands clasped, looking lovingly, almost worshipfully, 
up at his work on the wall. The bearing of all the 
children had changed; it was firmer and freer. 

The following fall the class was promoted to the next 
room above, where they were not treated as an unusual 
problem; consequently, constructive work was omitted, 
as it must necessarily prove a tax on the teacher's time 
and pocket, A few weeks later found Frank absent. 
When asked about him, one of the boys said, "I saw 
him on the lot the other day. He says he isn't coming 
to school any more." Here was a bit of school ex- 
perimentation, but its value was lost on account of the 
inflexibility of school organization. It did not fit into 
the system. 

Much of our educational procedure has come down 
to us from periods following the Renaissance, when en- 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 243 

thusiasm for knowledge as information disturbed the 
mental perspective and prevented educators from get- 
ting an adequate estimate of proportional values in the 
educative process. The overbalanced regard for the 
number of pages gone over in the text-book — the sub- 
ordination of quality of achievement to quantity of in- 
formation — and much of the method of the recitation 
are a legacy of this earlier distortion of ideas. 

We have now reached a point in educational enlight- 
enment where opposition to the scientific method must 
be frankly pronounced a prejudice. Those who en- 
tertain it cannot be expected to comprehend a new 
mode of procedure unless it be self-evolved; and this 
prejudice debars them from fairly testing what others 
declare good, because through expecting failure in it 
they will fail. It is rather singular that the experi- 
mental method, welcomed in other fields as evidence 
of progress, has received such scant courtesy in educa- 
tion. Education, no doubt, must be conservative, but 
when conservatism opposes investigations and com- 
parative trials under controlled conditions previously 
determined it is mere inertia. Every argument for 
conservatism in teaching applies equally to surgery, 
and yet by seizing scientific principles of change in 
methods the progress of surgery during the last fifty 
years has been almost unparalleled and, it may be 
added, the beginning of its progress dates from its 
renouncement of the traditional idea that reason with- 
out experiment is a sufficient guide. 

The writer is aware that much of what is best in 
teaching is received through the personal impress of 
those whose inspiration gives inimitable delicacy to the 
contact. But, after admitting all that may be claimed 



244 MIND IN THE MAKING 

by the advocates of native aptitude, there still remains 
a wilderness of wide extent through whose trackless 
maze intuitions are but a capricious guide. It is 
rather in the manner of executing the plan approved by 
experiment that the superior efficacy of the born 
teacher appears. 

At the request of the writer, Mr. William W. Hall, 
teacher of Spanish in the Yeatman High School of St. 
Louis, began a series of tests with two of his classes. 
The tests were given regularly on the same day of each 
week, and wxre intended primarily to measure the 
progress of the pupils and to find the curve of learning 
for one school subject under the natural conditions of 
the class-room. 

These tests, which were given every Tuesday, con- 
sisted each time of one hundred words, fifty per cent, 
of which were new words and phrases, and fifty per 
cent, old words in new combinations. The time al- 
lowed for each test was thirty minutes, and at the ex- 
piration of that time the papers were laid aside for 
collection. The sentences which composed the tests 
were prepared with great care in advance of the recita- 
tion and were dictated to the class in English and 
written directly into Spanish. As soon as every pupil 
had finished one sentence the next was dictated. The 
sentences were so constructed that there were exactly 
one hundred possible errors in each test, and the two 
classes had been at work one week before the first test 
was given. Effort was made to note all conditions that 
might affect the progress, but none were discovered 
except such as might be expected from time to time 
among high -school children. The classes were con- 
ducted in the usual manner, and the pupils were not 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 245 

aware that any use beyond that of grading was to be 
made of the results of the tests. Written exercises of 
this sort were so frequent in the school as to prevent 
any special comment. Indeed, the same weekly test 
had been the custom during the preceding year, though 
at that time no special use had been made of the re- 
sults. The papers were corrected without delay, and 
were returned to the pupils on the following day with 
their valuation. This kept the interest of the class 
keen and contributed to the success and accuracy of 
the investigation; for the hope of excelling his pre- 
vious record spurred every pupil to his maximum ef- 
fort at each test. That this was true was shown by 
the eagerness of all to learn each time whether they 
had improved on their previous record. Two classes 
were included in the investigation, one composed of 
fourteen boys and fourteen girls, and the other of ten 
boys and ten girls, and one class recited in the morn- 
ing and the other in the afternoon. 

As some of the pupils had never studied any foreign 
language before entering these Spanish classes, it 
seemed best, in tracing the curves, to separate them 
into (1) those who had previously had a year of Latin, 
(2) those who had already studied Latin and German 
for a year, and (3) those who had never before studied 
any foreign language. It was also decided to draw 
separate curves for the boys and girls. 

As frequently happens in experimental work, sug- 
gestions were obtained in lines other than those that 
prompted the investigation. The separation of those 
who had previously studied one or more foreign lan- 
guages from those who had not at once raised the 
question of the advantage of these languages in the 



246 



MIND IN THE MAKING 



subsequent study of Spanish, and the indications 
afforded by the progress of the pupils during the period 
of the test will be considered in the discussion of the 
curves of learning plotted from the weekly tests of the 
several groups. 
The tests were continued for fifteen weeks, which are 



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WEEKS 



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13 14 15 



severally indicated on the horizontal line below the 
curves that follow, while the relative standings of the 
pupils in percentages are shown to the left of the ver- 
tical line. 

Latin, because of its developed grammatical struc- 
ture, has long been thought to give its students unusual 
language discipline, and the curves of the several groups 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 



247 



were first studied in the hope of obtaining some informa- 
tion concerning this much debated question. 

It will be seen from the curves of Plates I and II that 
those who had studied Latin shot rapidly ahead of 
those who were beginning their first foreign language, 



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PLATE II. 

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B. ONE YEAR OF LAT1N< 

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WEEKS 



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but in Plate III the curve of two girls of about the same 
average ability as the others, who had studied only 
German before beginning Spanish, is well above the 
curve of the three girls of certainly not less language 
ability, as their teacher, Mr. Hall, informs me, who 



248 



MIND IN THE MAKING 



began Spanish with a year of Latin to their credit. 
But further, in addition to the fact that the curves of 
the several groups shown in Plate III do not sustain 
the belief in the superiority of Latin over German as a 
means of language discipline, the curves of the groups 
represented in Plates I and II indicate that the ad- 



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vantage afforded at the start by the previous study of 
other languages is not always maintained. These 
curves tend gradually to approach one another, and 
this would seem to show that in the fifteen weeks during 
which the tests were continued, some of the momentum 
given by the earlier study of other languages is lost. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 249 

In the class represented by Plate I, the curve for the 
boys who had never before studied a foreign language 
(Curve C) shows a gradual ascent. After the sixth 
week they improve noticeably and maintain this higher 
level to the end of the investigation. Curve B, on the 
other hand, representing the progress of a boy who 
started with the advantage of half a year of Latin, 
drops perceptibly during the same period, while the 
three boys who had had a year both of Latin and Ger- 
man (Curve A) hardly more than hold their own. It 
is certainly suggestive that the boys who were begin- 
ning their first foreign language (Curve C) were the 
only ones who at any later time during the fifteen weeks' 
test equalled their record of the second week. When 
the experiment ended they were at their highest average. 

The writer's studies in the psychology of learning 
have demonstrated that there is always a rapid initial 
rise, which later is ecjualled only after a good deal of 
work. The length of time needed to make the same 
record varies with individuals and with different sub- 
jects of study, but never in the course of fifteen weeks to 
reach again the high mark attained earlier in the work, 
as was the case with the boy who had studied Latin for 
half a year, as well as with the three who had had a 
year of both Latin and German, does not argue strongly 
for a general "language discipline." It will also be 
observed that these two groups (Curves A and B) 
scored their lowest record during the next to the last 
week, an unfavorable omen at that stage of the work, 
and especially so when we remember that all of the 
boys of the three groups whose progress is represented 
in these three curves (Plate I) were in the same class 
and were taking the same tests. 



250 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Turning to Plate II, if the progress of the seven boys 
with whom Spanish was the first foreign language 
(Curve C) is less marked than in the corresponding 
curve of the class shown in Plate I, there is, neverthe- 
less, a clear rise toward the end of the work, while the 
other two groups either drop slightly, as in the case of 
the one girl who had had a year of Latin and one-half 
year of German (Curve A), or, as with the one Latin 
boy, barely hold the former level. Here, again, the 
curve for the Spanish group reaches its highest level 
during the latter part of the period and closes on a 
higher level, compared with the previous records, than 
either of the other curves. None of these differences, 
in the opinion of the teacher in charge, could be ac- 
counted for by differences in the ability of the pupils. 

In the class shown in Plate III, there was only one 
girl who had never studied any other foreign language 
before entering the Spanish class, and she was between 
nineteen and twenty years of age when admitted to* the 
high school. As her classmates entered at the usual 
high school age, she worked under the disadvantage of 
being past the age favorable to remembering rules and 
declensions. The two girls who had already had a 
year of German (Curve A), the three who had studied 
Latin for a year (Curve C), and the one who had given 
a year to both Latin and German (Curve B), were of 
about the same average ability, as nearly as their 
teacher could determine, and all of them were superior, 
intellectually, to the one who was beginning her first 
foreign language with this class (Curve D). These in- 
dividual differences should be considered in comparing 
the curves. This class was composed entirely of girls. 

The number included in these tests was too small 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 251 

to serve as a basis for anything more than tentative 
conclusions, but the results certainly open the question 
whether the advantage to beginners of a new language, 
so generally thought to accrue from the study of Latin, 
may not be due, chiefly if not solely, to grammatical in- 
formation that would be carried over from one language 
to another, and which would naturally help enormously 
at the start. In acquiring facility in the use of the 
Spanish gender, to cite one example, Latin would aid 
materially, since the majority of Latin feminines are 
feminine in Spanish, and a large part of Latin mas- 
culines and neuters become masculine in Spanish. 
The declension of Spanish adjectives for gender and 
number, and their agreement, in these respects, with 
their nouns, would give Latin students a further ad- 
vantage. The teacher of the Spanish classes noted 
that more frequent and detailed explanations of case 
were needed by those who had not studied Latin. The 
order of words, also, was more readily mastered by 
those familiar with the Latin arrangement. Finally, 
in learning the conjugations and in understanding the 
significance of tenses, the assistance of the information 
acquired under these topics in Latin was found to be 
especially great. It cannot be doubted that the sub- 
stance of information carried over from Latin or Ger- 
man would give beginners in a new foreign language 
a decided lead over classmates who were receiving their 
first introduction to work of this sort. Whether they 
would continue to hold the higher level at which they 
started, or whether, after the others had mastered the 
information with which the former began, the curves 
of progress of these different groups would come to- 
gether, cannot be determined from this experiment. 



252 MIND IN THE MAKING 

To decide this, the tests should have been continued 
throughout the year. The indications, however, are 
that the higher records made by the Latin and German 
pupils were the result of the substance of language in- 
formation obtained from these studies rather than of 
any so-called "language" or "mental discipline." 

The purpose of this investigation was to demonstrate 
the possibility of subjecting such questions to the test 
of class-room experiment. Much has been said in the 
past about "formal training," and indeed such mys- 
terious phrases as "mental discipline" and "training 
the mental faculties" have long been such effective 
pedagogical slogans that it has been thought unneces- 
sary to expose them to the ordeal of experimental 
proof. Thorndike and Woodword, however, con- 
cluded from their investigation that "there is no reason 
to suppose that any general change occurs correspond- 
ing to the words 'improvement of the attention,' or 
'of the power of observation,' or of 'accuracy.'"^ 
Indeed, they go still farther and hold that not only 
may improvement in any single mental function not 
improve the ability in functions commonly called by 
the same name, but it may even injure it.^ 

Mr. Hall's work shows that the application of the 
scientific method to questions of this sort is entirely 
practicable. To give validity to the results, however, 
the number of pupils taking part in the test should be 
much greater, and the investigation extended to at 
least a year; but the amount of work involved in such 
experiments forbids that they be carried out by public 

' "The Influence of Improvement in one Mental Function upon the 
Efficiency of other Functions," Psychological Review, Vol. VIII, 1901, p. 
249. 

» fbid.. p. 250. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 253 

school teachers. Here is a rich field for pedagogical 
research in teachers' colleges. Experimental schools 
should be established by them, the aim of which should 
be to solve educational questions that lend themselves 
to the experimental method, and there are many prob- 
lems of that nature. 

Some years ago an experiment that was being made 
in the Pueblo (Colorado) High School was attracting 
the attention of progressive schoolmen throughout the 
country. Since that time the results of the experiment 
have been published in An Ideal School} Twenty 
pupils composing a Caesar class varied in working 
ability from forty units to one hundred and forty.^ 
Later, in a Holyoke (Mass.) grammar school, in an 
arithmetic class ^ nearly ready for the high school, Mr. 
Search found a difference of from one hundred and 
forty to four hundred and seventy-nine units in work- 
producing capacity; and in a Leominster (Mass.) 
geometry class ^ of twenty-six the variation in ability 
ranged from forty units of work to one hundred and 
sixty-eight. These figures win added significance when 
it is remembered that the question here is not one of 
mental defectives, but represents what is probably a 
fair average of the difference in work-producing capacity 
of the pupils in well-graded schools. 

A few years ago Mr. Gilbert B. Morjison, at that time 
principal of the Kansas City (Mo.) Manual Training 
High School, conscious of the great variation in work- 
ing power of high-school pupils, gave his teachers per- 
mission to try the " individual," or " laboratory method," 

' By Preston W. Search. 
''Ibid., p. 29. 
' Loc. cit., p. 33. 
* Loc. cit., p. 168. 



254 MIND IN THE MAKING 

if they desired. By this method, as suggested by Mr. 
Search, each pupil advances at his own pace, and it is 
found that the more able and proficient accomplish 
considerably more than would be possible with the 
"class-recitation" method, while the least capable do 
not cover so much ground, but, in compensation for 
this, it is claimed that, as far as they go, they master 
the subject more thoroughly. Mr. Morrison has re- 
ported ^ the results obtained in a variety of subjects. 

"The 'bad boy' was conspicuously absent from the 
algebra and geometry classes as soon as the ' individual 
method' was adopted, and if there were any strained 
relations between teacher and pupil they died out," 
was the statement of the master in charge of these 
subjects. "That tension of nerve and feeling, in- 
describable but real, which every teacher must at some 
time have felt and longed to be relieved of, practically 
disappeared." 

The history teacher found that the arrangement 
"made it possible for pupils, who under the old plan 
would have dragged through the year and failed on the 
entire work, to make a creditable grade in ancient 
history." 

In German, two bright girls finished the prescribed 
work a term in advance of their class, and in doing this 
acquired a feeling of confidence in their own power 
that encouraged them to begin French by themselves. 

The success of this method in the Kansas City 
Manual Training School was so striking that Mr. Mor- 
rison was encouraged to give permission to the teachers 
of the McKinley High School in St. Louis, where he is 

' Proceedings and Addresses of the Forly-second Annual Session of the 
Missouri State Teachers' Association, 1905, p. 63. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 255 

now located, to try it if they wished to do so. The 
work of two of the algebra classes in which it was used 
deserves special mention because the result was tested 
by a competitive examination with two other classes 
of no less ability, and taught by equally good teach- 
ers. Those who had worked by the "individual" 
method showed a distinctly better grasp of the subject. 
The conclusion was so evident that the teachers, who 
up to that time had followed the old method of class 
recitation, decided to adopt the new plan. In his 
estimate of the effect of the "individual" method, as 
he has observed it, Mr. Morrison reports that "the 
pupils say they have more time to think and have a 
better opportunity to make their difficulties known to 
the teacher. They do not show the weariness at the 
close of the day that they do when they recite continu- 
ally. The percentage of failures is considerably less 
than before, and many of the teachers who feared 
the results say that the practice has taught them some- 
thing about teaching, and they know their pupils better 
than they otherwise would." ^ With dull and bright 
pupils alike, the quality of the work, in Principal 
Morrison's opinion, has been very greatly improved. 

The number of times per week that a class may most 
advantageously meet has also been suggested for ex- 
perimental solution by the work of Search and Mor- 
rison. Do five recitations per week bring better re- 
sults than three ? The writer found a surprising gain 
in ability to keep two balls going with one hand, re- 
ceiving and throwing one while the other was in the 
air, during monthly intermissions of practice. These 

• Proceedings and Addresses of the Forty-fourth Annual Session of the 
Missouri State Teachers' Association, 1905, p. 64. 



256 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tests were made by three men and occurred every 
thirtieth day during five months. To test the question 
further, the same experiment was repeated * by two 
of the three after a lapse of six hundred and forty-two 
days from the last monthly test, and the score indicated 
an increase in skill beyond that which had been ac- 
quired at the completion of the earlier regular practice, 
when the experimenters were fresh from the work. A 
similar gain in facility in typewriting ^ was also found 
by the writer two years and thirty-five days after he 
had completed his investigation of this learning proc- 
ess. During the intervening time there had been no 
practice of any sort in either of these acts of skill. 
Bourdon ^ has observed the same persistence of mem- 
ory and improvement in function in various mental 
processes. The question is one of immense educa- 
tional importance, and its investigation should be con- 
tinued until its significance for the various levels of 
study has been determined. Observation of the effect 
of the "individual" method has led Principal Mor- 
rison to the conclusion ^ that the efficiency of high- 
school teaching may be greatly increased by placing 
studies on alternate days and lengthening the class 
periods. 

College teachers who become well enough acquainted 
with their students to learn their feelings, often hear 
the complaint that they have no time to think. They 
must continually grind, they say, and the significance 
of this remark becomes clearer from the fact that it is 



' American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XVI, p. 131. 
2 The Psychological Bulletin, Vol. Ill, p. 185. 
' L'Annee Psychologique, Vol. VIII, p. 327. 

* Proceedings and Addresses of the Forty-second Annual Session of the 
Missouri State Teachers' Association, Dec. 29-31, 1903, p. 73. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 257 

always the best students who make it. Is it not pos- 
sible that, in our enthusiasm for scholastic attainment, 
we have over-emphasized the information factor? In 
the light of the fragmentary experiments in subconscious 
mental activity thus far made, it is entirely conceivable 
that we are working against unnecessary friction- 
resistance in the extravagant idolatry of continuous 
instruction through books and lectures. Mentality may 
not make its best growth in this way. Arrest is quite 
as likely to be caused by overfeeding as by starvation. 
Spontaneity and versatility are not the least of the edu- 
cational desiderata, and they are not furthered by the 
monotony of continual grinding. Occasional days 
without text-book or lecture assignment, with one or 
two illuminating questions, suggested by the work of 
the course, but free from severely scientific accretions, 
announced for discussion, would help enormously to 
put meaning into studies that too frequently have little 
significance for the learner beyond their scientific as- 
pects or the correct solution of problems which are 
often far away from the life of pupil and student. 

The disastrous effect of determining the quantity of 
assignment by what can be accomplished by the best 
students, or by the mythical average, which impressed 
Search and Morrison, has been observed at West Point. 
" Heretofore," wrote one of the officers of instruction in 
a personal communication, "under the plea of mental 
gymnastics and in order to accomplish a complete 
course, the lower men have been dragged along at a 
pace beyond their powers, with the result that, instead 
of having a sound practical working mastery of the 
elements, they have had a more or less confused and 
feeble comprehension of an advanced course beyond 



258 MIND IN THE MAKING 

their needs, and have been left in a state of mental 
dyspepsia and exhaustion as injurious as it is wasteful 
of time and effort." At West Point they are now 
meeting this difficulty by grading the cadets with 
severe accuracy, and the sections containing the weaker 
students omit portions of the work taken by the better 
ones, the omissions being more frequent as they de- 
scend in the scale of ability, and, in addition, those of 
superior power — the upper sections — continue the work 
beyond the point at which the others stop. 

In order to find out as nearly as possible what may 
be regarded as the minimum individual variation in 
ability of students in exceptionally well-graded classes, 
the writer consulted the standings of the members of 
the graduating classes of the United States Military 
Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy at 
Annapolis, for the years 1904 and 1905. Subjects of 
study vital to a successful military and naval career 
were selected, and the grades of the highest and lowest 
in these several subjects were ascertained from the 
official registers for the years considered. With these 
it was thought best to include English. As the Naval 
Academy does not publish a separate standing for 
English, this could not be included in Table II. The 
register for 1905, however, contains the marks of the 
class in languages, and they will be found with the 
others below. All of the standings have been com- 
puted on the basis of 100 per cent, for perfect standing. 
There were 124 students in the class of 1904 at West 
Point, and 114 in the class of 1905, while the corre- 
sponding classes of the Naval Academy contained 47 
and 62 respectively. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 



259 



TABLE I 
United States Military Academy 



Subjects of Study 


CLASS OF 1904 


CLASS OF 1905 


Highest 


Lowest 


Highest 


Lowest 


Practical Military Engineer- 
ing 


99.88 


83.80 


99.28 


75.93 


Civil and Military Engineer- 
ing 


100. 


70.38 


99.79 


68.45 


English 


100. 


67.54 


99.38 


70.60 


Mathematics 


99.72 


63.95 


99.98 


68.14 



TABLE II 

United States Naval Academy 



Subjects of Study 


class of 1904 


CLASS OF 1905 


Highest 


Lowest 


Highest 


Lowest 


Physics 


96.75 


58. 


95.29 


65.50 




Navigation . 


91.50 


55.75 


96. 


62.50 




Languages 


— 


— 


100. 


64.50 





260 MIND IN THE MAKING 

In the West Point Military Academy in 1904, as will 
be seen from Table I, the best students in practical 
military engineering received 99.88 per cent., and the 
lowest, 83.80 per cent. In 1905, the variation was in- 
creased from 75.93 per cent, for the lowest to 99.28 for 
the highest. In civil and military engineering the 
corresponding range in 1904 was 100 per cent, for the 
best and 70.38 for the poorest, and in 1905 the differ- 
ence in the same subject varied from 99.79 to 68.45 
per cent. In mathematics the extremes were 99.72 
per cent, and 63.95, in 1904, with 99.98 and 68.14 in 
1905. In English, the best and lowest for 1904 were 
100 and 67.54 respectively, while in 1905, the corre- 
sponding standings were 99.38 and 70.60. It goes 
without saying that in all of these cases only those who 
passed the final examination for graduation were in- 
cluded in the statistics. 

At West Point absolutely no consideration is shown 
to those who cannot or do not do the work. This 
makes these figures unusually instructive. It is strictly 
a question of ability in the subjects of the curriculum. 
The writer is assured by graduates of the institution 
that all of the students work to the utmost limit of 
their ability. "Our purposes are so well defined and 
our proficiency standards are necessarily so rigid," 
continued the officer mentioned above, "that study 
must be severe and unremitting throughout the class. 
We have the pressure of the entire nation behind us 
in enforcing our requirements, besides the prize of a 
commission, both of which contribute to produce a tre- 
mendous coercive force. There is no loafing at West 
Point. As to marks, we are more thorough in the ap- 
plication of the marking system than any other in- 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 261 

stitution of which I know, except, perhaps, Annapohs. 
We have to do this to insure accurate grading for 
graduation standards. I suppose it is the best arti- 
ficial scheme which can be devised for determining 
relative degrees of proficiency." 

In the Naval Academy, as Table II shows, the high- 
est in physics in the class of 1904 received a mark of 
96.75 per cent, and the lowest 58, while in navigation 
the variation was 91.50 and 55.75 for the same year. 
In 1905, the range in physics was 95.29 for the highest 
and 65.50 for the lowest, and in navigation it was 96 
per cent, and 62.50. In languages the difference for 
this year was 100 per cent, for the best and 64.50 for 
the lowest. The grades of graduates of these two in- 
stitutions may, in the opinion of the writer, be taken 
as the average minimum of individual variation for the 
number of students in the several classes. 

These figures, of course, have only relative value, 
but that is what gives them their importance. After 
the elimination of the preceding years and that of the 
final examination — and in no other educational in- 
stitution in the country is it even approximately so 
severe — this wide difference in ability must be tol- 
erated to meet the needs of the army and navy. This 
is certainly very significant. If such variation in 
mental capacity exists among a body of picked 
students, how much greater must be the extremes in 
public elementary and secondary schools, where the 
selection is necessarily incomparably more relenting? 
It throws wide open the whole question of the method 
of the recitation and makes imperative its experi- 
mental investigation. 

Again, the time for beginning the various studies of 



262 MIND IN THE MAKING 

the elementary and secondary schools has received 
little attention other than theoretical. It is now known 
that there are periods in the lives of children when 
their minds crave certain kinds of activity. This may 
be a phase of the fact previously mentioned that both the 
body and mind mature in sections instead of develop- 
ing evenly. There is a time when children want to 
draw pictures (the pictorial stage), to read adventures 
(the beginning of the historical interest), to read litera- 
ture of various kinds, to criticise and debate (the in- 
terest in questions of logic), and to study machinery 
and invent (the scientific interest). These nascent 
periods are the psychological moment for the several 
lines of work. If struck at white heat, the mind begins 
a new growth, attacking and assimilating ideas with 
keen avidity, and the mentality acquires a new and 
permanent bent, culminating in an interest very differ- 
ent from the artificial adhesion which teachers usually 
seek to attach by various devices which are thought to 
create a liking for the subject. Instead of suppressing 
these seemingly erratic outbursts, the schools should 
make them their allies in the development of children. 
These nascencies are not rigid developmental events 
occurring at definite ages. They are features of in- 
dividual psychology and furnish further evidence 
against the customary manner of grading and the 
"even front" shibboleth of schoolmen. Education can 
never accomplish its best until the mass method of 
training has been relegated to pedagogical tradition 
with other educational lore. This individual factor in 
education is the element of success in the Princeton 
tutorial system, and the "personal touch" of the pre- 
ceptors reveals the lost opportunity of professors im- 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 263 

mersed in the mediaeval system of lectures and the 
traditional aloofness of scholastic dignity. 

Grammar in the grades is the bane alike of teacher 
and pupil, yet no serious attempt has been made, out- 
side of committee rooms and teachers' meetings, to 
decide when it may begin most profitably. Im- 
pressed by the generally observed deficiency in this 
subject, the framers of curriculums think it should 
come early in the course, that it may be given plenty 
of time, and so formal grammar is often begun before 
the teens. Now grammar is elementary logic, and 
for this reason the time when it could be most effect- 
ively studied would seem to be during the "critical," 
"debating period," i. e., during the high-school course. 
A high-school principal recently told the writer that an 
experiment extending over three years had convinced 
him that he could teach his third-year pupils more 
grammar in six weeks than they had acquired in all 
their previous study of the subject, and this was as 
true of those who had not taken Latin as of those 
who had. One man's experiment in a matter of this 
sort may not afford conclusive proof, but it certainly 
suggests a profitable line of investigation, and it is 
the disregard of the investigating method, so general 
among educationists, that has caused the reports of 
their committees to be treated with scant courtesy by 
scientific men. 

It is almost certain that modern languages are 
begun too late. In Germany, American children from 
seven to ten years of age learn to speak the language 
with a fluency and accuracy far superior to that of 
boys above fourteen, and that, too, in a fraction of 
the time. Would it not be advantageous to begin 



2G4 MIND IN THE MAKING 

French and German by the conversational method early 
in the grades ? Experiment only can settle this qnes- 
tion. It is entirely possible that utilization of nascent 
periods may save time enough to meet the needs felt 
for subjects now largely crowded out of the public 
school curriculum. 

The logical order of sequence is not necessarily the 
pedagogical, nor is the imjx)rtance of a study a valid 
reason for introtlucing it before the fulness of time. 
Here is an almost inexhaustible mine for experimental 
investigation. Ai-ithmetic receives from one-third to 
one-half more time than any other subject in the ele- 
mentary course — in some schools it is given as much 
time during the eight years as any other two subjects, 
and yet it is a common experience of teachers to find 
classes that ranked from So to 100 per cent., when 
taking it in regular course, drop to 25 or 35 per cent, 
the following year, when reviewing the same work. Why 
not start classes of fairly equal ability at different ages 
imder the same teacher, and see whether the results are 
sufficiently decisive to determine the nascent period for 
this subject, so far at least as general psycholog}' can 
serve as a guide ? This would furnish an experimental 
starting point for individual variation. Several INIis- 
souri schools are trying the plan of cutting out large 
sections of arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades, 
and in its place substituting elementary algebra. The 
more advanced topics in arithmetic are then taken up 
in the senior year of the high school, when increased 
mental maturity enables the pupils to do the work in 
much less time and with greater comprehension and 
enjoyment. Under this plan all problems capable of 
algebraic statement, and other more difficult topics, are 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 265 

omitted in the grades, and so many of them as seem 
essential are taken up in the high school. 

Dr. J. M. Rice tested 6,000 children in arithmetic, 
and, finding the usual appalling deficiency, concluded 
that "the controlling factor in the accomplishment of 
results is to be found in the system of examinations em- 
ployed, some systems leading to better results than 
others." * One is reminded of the man who ate a mid- 
night luncheon of lobster a la Newhurg with raw toma- 
toes, hot Welsh rarebit, English plum pudding, hot 
mince pie, Roquefort cheese with crackers, and a bottle 
of champagne. When his doctor was leaving the next 
morning, the patient, after a night of exquisite agony, 
turned his face to the wall with the remark that raw 
tomatoes never did agree with him anyhow, and he 
would never again touch the " pesky " things. 

Wliatever may be said of the benefit of collecting 
and summarizing one's thoughts concerning a given 
topic and putting them on paper, examinations have 
long been a kind of pedagogical cudgel held threaten- 
ingly over youthful searchers for light. Written work 
as a means of educational growth, and examinations 
as a basis for grading, are two different ideas, though 
they are often confusedly intermingled in the argument. 
The value of the first no one would be inclined to deny, 
but the second is at least questionable. As was shown 
in a preceding chapter, a student with strong visual 
brain can commit pages to memory in a night of cram- 
ming, and pass a more brilliant examination than an- 
other greatly his superior in thinking power and grasp 
of the subject, but weaker in mental visualization. 
Examinations, then, will rank the abler man below the 

I Farum, Vol. XXXIV, p. 444. 



266 MIND IN THE MAKING 

shallow crammer. No one has been connected with 
schools and universities as student or instructor without 
seeing this happen in cases without number. A right 
comprehension of brain nature and brain processes 
demands the abolition of examinations. They are the 
weapon of the weak teacher for forcing the student 
to do the work that the teacher's intelligence and 
inspiration should bring about. But they really do not 
have this desired effect, for the students defend them- 
selves against it by preparing merely for the examina- 
tion. The true work they omit. If they knew that 
every day was contributing decisively to the estimate 
of them, and that there would be no examinations to 
redeem their failures here, they would do real instead 
of examination work. But the inadequacy of examina- 
tions does not end with this, since there are others who 
for very different reasons do not show their knowledge 
by such tests. Lobsien * investigated the effect of the 
examination-consciousness on the ability of fifty-four 
eight-year-old boys to work on paper moderately dif- 
ficult examples in arithmetic, and found that the chil- 
dren made more mistakes and did not accomplish so 
much as they did when they knew that the results were 
not to be used in determining their standings. As a 
result of his investigation he concluded that examina- 
tions never show the ability of children. Their continued 
popularity rests on the force of tradition and imitation, 
as well as on the fact that they offer the inducement of 
least resistance. Facts — mere information — seem made 
for ease in questioning and lend themselves with facility 
to accuracy in marking and, in addition, they enable 
uninspiring teachers to force a semblance of attention 

> Die Experimentelle Padagogik, Vol. I, p. 30. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 267 

to the work. In many schools that prepare for college 
or state examinations, the pressure to put their pupils 
through converts education into an examination-ma- 
chine practice. This perversion of the educational 
ideal is the cause of much of the averred insufficiency 
of high-school training. 

Self-government among boys has already received 
considerable experimental attention.^ The difficulty 
here is the difference in the personality of the teachers. 
Under a Thomas Arnold a benevolent monarchy ac- 
complishes results that the best system of pupil govern- 
ment fails to secure under a less inspiring teacher. The 
failure to secure results with a given method does not 
necessarily prove the worthlessness of the plan. If one 
of two schools under different forms of government is 
permeated with an esprit de corps that makes dishonor- 
able conduct among the pupils impossible, and the 
other is conspicuous for cheating and other forms of 
conduct recognized as dishonorable, the fault in the 
latter instance may lie in the plan of the management 
or with the teacher in control, or with both. Disagree- 
ment concerning experimental school government arises 
chiefly from the varying conditions under which the ex- 
periments are made. But if this is the cause of in- 
definiteness during the early experimental stage, it is 
also the justification of the experimental method, since 
this alone gives a reasonable basis for the elimination of 
incapable teachers. The difficulty in distinguishing be- 

• Seventh Annual Report of the New York City Superintendent of Schools, 
p. 451. Max B. Thrasher: " A Government of Boys, for Boys, by Boys," 
New England Magazine, Vol. XXII, 1900, p. 193. C. W. French: 
"School Government," School Revieio, Vol. VI, 1898, p. 36. John R. 
Commons, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. Ill, p. 439. Report of the 
U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1901, Vol. I, p. 235. Various Reports 
of the Farm School, Thompson's Island, and of Boyville, Cleveland, O. 



268 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tween good teachers and poor ones is the lack of a 
standard of criticism and judgment. So long as phys- 
ical force and punishment were permissible, uninterest- 
ing teachers, if sufficiently forceful, could still maintain 
a semblance of tranquillity. If the repressed forces oc- 
casionally erupted, the cause was ascribed to the innate 
wickedness of boys, and coercion and repression were 
applied at the exposed danger point until quiet was 
restored. The disfavor into which corporal punish- 
ment has fallen makes it difficult for those who are in- 
competent to keep eruptions under restraint. The 
view that incapacity of teachers is more responsible for 
school disorders than original sin inherent in children 
is steadily gaining ground. The Juvenile Courts, under 
the control of men who understand boy nature, have 
given convincing arguments. When a judge can re- 
move ^ policemen from the most disorderly section of a 
city and put in charge of preserving order the very boys 
who have been the cause of the disturbances, advocates 
of coercion and repression have quaking ground on 
which to stand. 

Superiority to investigation and experiment, forced 
by progress in the several sciences to retire from one 
position after another, is making its last stand in the 
field of education. The chief difficulty in driving it 
from its present vantage ground is the mystic potency 
of "experience." There is probably no other word 
that lends itself to juggling with such charming edifica- 
tion and mystification of both the juggler and his 
audience. Its very utterance with proper unction is by 
many thought sufficient to subdue any demand for 

' See Lincoln Steffens's paper in McClure's Magazine, October, 1906, 
pp. 574-575. 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 269 

proof of its oracular deliverances. The effect of ex- 
perience is always relative. Its teachings vary with the 
ability of the individual to interpret correctly the ele- 
ments that enter into situations. Naturally, its counsel 
is diverse. Just why education differs from other 
branches of knowledge in dispensing with the pre- 
liminary steps of investigation and experimentation, 
and in disclosing its innermost secrets to its prophets 
by a sort of immediate perception has never been 
shown. The poorest teachers are not necessarily the 
youngest, nor may we always point to those who 
have reached the meridian of life as models of excel- 
lence. In teaching it is usually quantitative experi- 
ence, instead of qualitative, that receives the highest 
mark. 

Certainly no one would wish to underestimate the 
value of the native insight into the needs of children 
shown by the born teacher, but to deny the importance 
of the investigation of the facts of child life, because a 
few understand them intuitively, would be as unscien- 
tific as to maintain that psychology is unnecessary for 
men primarily concerned with human actions, because 
the untaught Shakespeare wrote plays from which 
psychologists continue to draw illustrations. The 
great mass of teachers do not possess this intuitive in- 
sight, and their work must rest on intellectual conclu- 
sions consciously acquired. Acceptance of word- 
formulas without ascertaining by investigation and 
experiment whether there is any truth in them has pre- 
ceded the scientific method in all branches of knowledge, 
and education is still greatly controlled by this occult 
process. During the last decade much information has 
been gathered, but it has not permeated education be- 



270 MIND IN THE MAKING 

cause of the curious feeling that this subject cannot be 
approached from the scientific side. 

It is partly because of the tyranny of "experience," 
and consequent suppression of the scientific spirit, that 
teachers hav-e been such easy victims of cheap peda- 
gogical literature. Probably no other class of intel- 
ligent people has ever been written down to in the 
same humiliating way. It seems to have been as- 
sumed that everything must be diluted and strained, 
and strained and diluted again, lest by chance som.e 
solid particles of virile thought go through the filter and 
find lodgment in the mind of the readers. Teachers 
have had their own books on psycholog}^ — usually 
written by men who knew little of the subject, but who 
had acquired the art of saying commonplace things in 
an imposing way. Most of the books on pedagogy that 
were not platitudinous were labored attempts at de- 
scribing the mental processes of children in formal 
terms by analysis of the adult mind. Little else could 
be expected so long as the antiquated notion prevailed 
that knowledge of the processes of child development 
could be intuitively absorbed from uncriticised and 
unorganized experience. The application to pedagogy 
of the scientific method of research and experimentation 
is already evident in its literature. That this change 
has so little effect upon the schools, while mainly the 
fault of educators, is not wholly so. The people often 
turn over the management of their schools to boards 
who use them for their own enrichment or run them as 
political machines. The efforts of superintendents to 
improve the nature of the instruction are met with pro- 
tests against additional expense and higher taxes, and 
if this does not quite blind the people to the right of 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 271 

their children to the best that educational thought of the 
day can offer, the cry of "fad" is usually a convincing 
argument, though what dreadful scourge a "fad" may 
bring, only the interested politicians can tell. So great 
an influence may a word of mysterious emptiness wield. 

Few superintendents are willing to face the issue 
squarely. And yet when the choice between good 
schools — and this implies much more than good instruc- 
tion — and poor ones is clearly set before the people 
their support is usually decisive. Educators, however, 
must take the public into their confidence and show 
what good education means. Civic indifference to 
educational progress is due to the engrossment of the 
people in other things, and to lack of time and oppor- 
tunity to keep up with the movement. 

Experiments are of service in education for the same 
reason as in other branches of knowledge. They force 
one to face squarely the conditions of the situation under 
discussion. The relative significance of the various 
factors that go to make up an experience can only be 
determined by the process of elimination. Uncon- 
trolled conditions are usually too complex for theoretical 
analysis. The scientific method simplifies the situation 
so far as possible, and takes accurate cognizance of the 
factors involved, so as to separate the essential from the 
adventitious and to ascertain the part played by each 
necessary element. Unregulated observation is too 
greatly influenced by the personal equation to give 
validity to its judgments. This is particularly true of 
education, because of the petty annoyances of the 
school-room. Extraneous factors, resulting many times 
from the ill-health or incompetence of teachers, are 
enormously exaggerated, and the essential elements are 



272 MIND IN THE MAKING 

SO grotesquely distorted that the view obtained is a 
perverted representation of the situation. It cannot 
well be otherwise so long as the personal experience of 
teachers who are worn out by the strain of the school- 
room forms the basis of educational policy. Matters 
are not much improved when the superintendent's 
office is the power-house. In the United States, at 
least, the function of the superintendent is becoming 
more and more that of the diplomat. Desire to hold 
his position puts him under continual pressure to in- 
quire what he tnay do rather than to search out what 
he should do. He is the follower of what he thinks is 
the safe course, and invariably this is disastrous to 
progressive thinking. The habit of shaping utterances 
and actions with reference to keeping a position gradu- 
ally deprives one of the power to form independent 
opinions. 

Thus far educational experiments have been too de- 
tached and fragmentary. The few who have under- 
taken them were already burdened with heavy work 
which occupied most of their day. This left little 
leisure or energy for working out details or for critical 
study of the results. In many instances lack of time 
forced the abandonment of the experiment before its 
completion. This is the result of the failure to appre- 
ciate the importance of the work. Education has been 
too absorbed in its history. Teachers are constantly 
straining their eyes by looking over their shoulders at 
Pestalozzi, Froebel, and Herbart instead of forward to 
new achievements. As a result, pedagogy is always 
on the defensive against the charge of vagarious ro- 
manticism and practical inadequacy. 

The progress of the last twenty years in the phys- 



EXPERIMENTAL PEDAGOGY 273 

iology and hygiene of growth and development has made 
it necessary to remap the field of educational forces. 
Racial and individual elements have been found to be 
essential factors in the equations, and the too general 
neglect of them in the past has introduced into the 
results a constant error. Economy of energy is quite as 
truly a problem for education as for mechanics. Effi- 
ciency, the ratio of useful work to the energy expended 
in accomplishing it, may be increased by lessening the 
resistance or by applying more power, and teachers have 
occupied themselves too exclusively with producing 
power. In the midst of children all aglow with en- 
thusiasm for activity, they set themselves squarely 
against these racial impulses and apply more power 
until the weaker yields; and this they do because of 
fetichistic veneration for traditional ideals of school 
management. Experimentation will rejuvenate educa- 
tional conduct by founding standards of efficiency on a 
growing knowledge of the relation of subjects of study, 
time of introduction, and manner of treatment, to the 
age and individual needs of the pupils. 

The utilization of the streams of racial energy in 
generating power applicable to the interpretation of 
situations, and to control over them — for this measures 
one's accomplishments — is the fundamental educa- 
tional problem. In doing this the racial energy that 
civilization and urban life have made non-product- 
ive becomes productive. The results obtained by 
Judge Lindsey and William R. George are not closed 
with the reformation of young criminals. These men 
succeed because they have thrown aside traditional 
standards of judgment and primitive ideas of author- 
ity, and made boy nature their starting point. They 



274 MIND IN THE MAKING 

have joined in a league with the boys on terms of 
equaUty. 

The latent energy of nascent periods, of suggestion 
and imitation, has long been recognized, but this 
knowledge has been acted upon in a most desultory 
way. To organize these chaotic, opposing racial and 
cultural forces for physical and mental development is 
the work of the science of education. To accomplish 
this, the effective scientific method must replace the 
expensive method of following unorganized experience. 



CHAPTER IX 

SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 

Probably in no other field of thought is there so 
much interest to-day as in education. After the 
reconstruction following the Renaissance, education 
looked upon its work and saw that it was good, and 
fell asleep. During the interim, educational writers 
have been chiefly occupied with repeating in weak 
phrases the ideas that thinkers put out in vigorous 
language, when education began to break away from 
medisevalism. A short time ago educationists awak- 
ened to this situation. The jolt that disturbed their 
slumbers was given by the industrial and commercial 
workers as they were moving past. Education was 
well in the rear before its priesthood became fully 
conscious of the ground they had lost, and in the 
scramble that followed great confusion prevailed, from 
which we have not yet recovered. 

Education has been under especial fire recently. 
This was part of the general disturbance that awakened 
its leaders. Charges of insufficiency have been openly 
made and vigorously pushed. While some of the 
accusations made against the schools are founded on 
misapprehension, the indubitable fact remains that 
there is a factiousness in their organization and plan of 

275 



276 



MIND IN THE MAKING 



work that seriously detracts from their efficiency. The 
anxiety of children to quit school, and the evident will- 
ingness of their parents that they do so is an unanswer- 
able indication of weakness. The first of the follow- 
ing curves/ traced by Prof. C. M. Woodward of Wash- 



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HIGH SCHOOL 



GRAMMAR SCHOOL 

Curve I 

ington University, shows the rate of withdrawal from 
the several grades and high-school classes, in Boston, 
Chicago and St. Louis, for 1900, or a little earlier. 

' Report of the President of the St. Louis Board of Education, 1899- 
1900. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 



277 



Book/ after correcting errors of earlier investigators, 
concludes that "making allowance for all corrections 
and setting the facts in their most favorable light, it 
still appears that more than half of those who ought to 






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GRAMMAR GRADES 



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Curve 112 



' Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. XII, p. 239. 

2 Curve II was traced by Dr. Edward L. Thorndike and published in 
Bulletin No. 379 of the National Bureau of Education, which appeared 
as this book was going through the press. It represents the average 
elimination of pupils from school in American cities of 25,000 and over. 
The annual report of Andrew S. Draper, New York Commissioner of 
Education, has also just been issued. He finds that " not more than 
one-third of the children who enter our elementary schools ever finish, 
and that not one-half of them go beyond the fifth or sixth grade. It is 
hardly less surprising," he continues, " to find that only about one-third 
of the pupils who go to the high schools remain beyond the second year, 
and that only about one-sixth of those who enter remain to graduate." 



278 MIND IN THE MAKING 

complete a high-school course never enter a secondary 
school," and "of those who enter, only about twenty 
per cent, remain to complete the course." Truly, this 
is a very bad showing, but another fact makes it worse. 
Book also found from an investigation that included the 
high schools of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New 
York, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Montana, 
and Utah, that the graduates are chiefly girls. The pro- 
portion of boys to girls varies somewhat in different 
places, but it usually runs from one-third to one-fourth, 
and reaches even one-fifth. High-school principals 
thus find themselves in the curious situation of having 
their courses tabooed by the boys, for whom they are 
almost exclusively planned, and taken by girls to whose 
needs they are ill adapted. When we ask why boys 
leave the high school various reasons are given, the one 
perhaps most commonly offered being the desire to 
begin work. The causes we apprehend, may be placed 
under two main heads — the social and the strictly edu- 
cational. We are required to consider the social here, 
in so far as they hinder education from accomplishing 
its work. The system of education might be made 
perfect in every respect and yet be a failure, if some 
other cause or causes prevented the great majority of 
youths from taking advantage of it. The country 
would then be but little better served by the brilliant 
system of education than if it had been a poor system, 
or even none, since so few would enjoy its advantages. 
The business of the educator is then not only to per- 
fect his system, but, if it still fails to win the people, 
to find out why and to apply the remedy. For genuine 
education has grown to be a thing of predominant im- 
portance in the world; it is no longer the exercise of a 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 279 

small class off in the nooks and corners of society. If 
democracies are to stand, it will be through the power 
and effect of popular education; the educators are not 
jet, but are to be, in a very important manner the pre- 
servers of society. And in this function a very decisive 
part of their work is to see that their education reaches 
society. Education is not popular unless the people 
get it. It is a contradiction in terms to speak 
about a popular education which does not spread 
thoroughly over the whole mass of the people. And 
only this genuinely popular education will uphold de- 
mocracies. Therefore we venture to say that that edu- 
cator is in these days a poor one who does not make the 
understanding of social forces a part of his equipment. 

There are two great classes of those who withdraw 
from the schools, — the children of the poor who must go 
to work, and those who leave from loss of interest and 
discouragement. Improvement of the education given 
will reach the latter, but it will not touch the majority 
of the former — the poor. Of those who answered 
Book's questionaire the chief reason given for quitting 
the school was indifference resulting from loss of interest 
or discouragement. Some would probably allege this 
cause to obscure their poverty. But let us defer ex- 
amining the effects of social poverty on education, and 
survey those elements in the nature of the education 
offered which drive children and youths, who might 
attend, out of the schools. 

What underlies this loss of interest is, of course, not 
a simple question, but probably not the least important 
element is the fact that, in determining studies, and in 
deciding upon the manner in which they shall be 
taught, the criteria are almost wholly external to the 



2S0 MIND IN THE MAKING 

pupils. One cause of this is the influence of the college 
in its refusal to accept for entrance what has not been 
weighed in its scales. The high schools thus become 
valets of colleges, though only a small percentage of 
their pupils ever enter college, and those who do not, 
pay the penalty or leave the school. Most of them do 
the latter. The blame for the manner of teaching also 
belongs to the colleges. They must have something 
about which they can ask questions, and so, too com- 
monly still, in English, historical references and philo- 
logical details must be worked out and memorized, and 
everything must be outlined and analyzed and criticised 
and fossilized. In physics the causes of natural 
phenomena and the way in which machinery of various 
sorts works, in which boys are absorbingly interested, 
must yield to quantitative measurements for which they 
care nothing, because that is what university Ph.D's 
have been doing until they have come to think that the 
intellectual life is made up of amperes, volts, ohms, and 
watts. The fact that, in many high schools, college 
candidates and those who are not are taught in sepa- 
rate classes does not much alter the matter. The uni- 
versity spirit of measuring pervades the entire science 
work. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the same man 
can teach successfully in two widely different ways. 
The manager of one of the so-called dental colleges, 
abounding in cities, and in which cheap work is done, 
once told the writer that while all of his operators were 
graduates of regular dental colleges, and, in many in- 
stances, were, at graduation, among the best in their 
class, he always found that a year or two at work of a 
cheap grade unfitted them for work of a high order. 
He had found it necessary, he said, to keep two sets of 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 281 

men, one for the cheap trade and another for good work. 
Evidently it is not a question of merely good and bad 
work, but rather of widely different ways of doing the 
same thing. It is a matter of physiological adapta- 
tion, of neural habit. 

It may be said that unwillingness of boys to com- 
plete the public-school course does not prove that the 
schools are to blame. This may be true, yet such evi- 
dent failure to satisfy the requirements of the situation 
indicates a real problem not to be lightly thrown aside. 
The purpose of the public schools is to educate the 
children of the masses, and if they decline to accept 
education on our terms two courses are open to us: 
we may continue as before, piously regretting, of course, 
the inability of so many parents and children to under- 
stand what is for their good, as no doubt Lowell's 
learned chemist did when he found that celery, demon- 
strated by his painstaking investigations to be the best 
possible food for ducks, was almost the only thing 
"the derned things wouldn't touch"; or we may 
seriously take up the question from the standpoint of 
the children. 

The feeling that education does not fit for life has 
become so general that teachers have been forced to 
recognize it. But this recognition has thus far only 
taken the form of introducing into the curriculum 
studies that are of immediate and direct utility in 
earning a living. Many of the commercial subjects 
are of this type, and manual training is taking on more 
and more of the trade-learning form. One of the causes 
of this is that which has usually determined the reception 
of an irresistible demand for educational reform — the 
inclination to follow lines of least resistance. Finding 



282 MIND IN THE MAKING 

it absolutely necessary to take some action, the easiest 
thing to do was to meet the new demands by a partial 
expedient. It has always been the tendency of educa- 
tionists, like politicians, to resist reform until revolt 
has forced it upon them, and then, in yielding to the 
inevitable, to adopt the nearest apparent relief. The 
movement toward the practical, and even the trade- 
learning, as contrasted with the education it displaces, 
is a notable step in educational progress. It first of 
all crowds out the teaching of a mass of antiquated 
matter. It trains in and for action, and fits in a man- 
ner for actual life; since it leads to bread-winning it at- 
taches some to the school for a longer time, and while 
there they imbibe other elements of education. Besides, 
some of the strictly commercial studies, if taught by a 
large-minded teacher, may be freighted with a good 
many allied values. 

After saying all this in appreciation, it remains that 
immediate and direct commercial utility is not a satis- 
factory criterion of the educative value of subjects of 
study. Commerce has usurped a larger share of 
human life than belongs to it. It has crowded out 
much that is better than commerce, to the great hurt 
of human intelligence and character. It has turned 
most men into commercial specialists, and many of 
them, alas, into merely that. Had educators been 
alive to the real scope of their field this could not have 
happened. Educators acquiesced, and fell into the 
commercial procession behind the sharp commercial- 
ists. And now they are reduced to the position of 
begging of these commercialists for funds to conduct 
and advance education. The public schools, as spe- 
cializers of children for commercial work, rather tend 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 283 

to narrow their minds and confirm them in the convic- 
tion which fills the outer atmosphere, that commercial- 
ism is everything. 

We set against this excess an idea of education that 
will correct the distorted estimate of commerce, by 
bringing before the young all the true values of life and 
drawing into activity all the rich powers of their nat- 
ures. They would then go out into the world with 
such sane and complete demands on existence that they 
would spurn the starved thought and cramping life of 
the mere commercialist. To sum up, as commerce 
should be only an adjunct of broad life, so practical 
commercial teaching is properly only an adjunct of 
education, and its introduction into the schools cannot 
solve the problems we have raised. Nor does its pres- 
ence in the courses retain in the schools the many chil- 
dren who require something besides "shop" education 
to kindle their interest. The attempt to popularize 
public education by this method can, therefore, give at 
best only imperfect success. 

May it not be — and this is our view — that many of 
those who might continue, drop out of school early in 
their course because of the failure to make the pupils 
the starting point in deciding upon subjects of study 
and manner of treatment ? These questions are usually 
settled in the office of the superintendent, and the basis 
of his decision is his idea of what the pupils' minds 
ought to be, not what they are. 

Nascent periods, to which we have referred in the 
previous chapter, have been largely ignored. Instead 
of utilizing these flashes of racial life to kindle a natural 
enthusiasm, the schools have tried to create a suppos- 
ititious interest, and when the pupils are found de- 



284 MIND IN THE MAKING 

ficient in certain subjects which are thought important, 
the solution usually offered is to introduce these studies 
earlier so as to give more of them. Yet, in spite of the 
attention given to English grammar, the complaint that 
children entering the high school have no grammatical 
"feeling" is not stilled, and an enormous expenditure 
of energy is required to awaken even a semblance of 
ardor for a variety of studies at the age when they are 
begun. The facts of mental growth accumulated in 
recent years by students of child development have 
made little headway against the authority of logical 
sequence. 

In the manner of treatment of subject-matter there is 
the same servility to the fetich of logic. Subjects of 
study assume a certain logical form in the adult mind, 
and the inference that they must take the same form 
in all minds is thought axiomatic. Yet the order in 
which ideas first appear in immature minds may be very 
different from the order found by adult analysis. The 
letters of the alphabet are the elements of words which 
make up sentences, but it is a matter of common knowl- 
edge to-day that children do not naturally learn to read 
by the A-B-C method. Yet this undeniable proof that 
in some things, at least, children ignore details in reach- 
ing results — that they jump logical stages, make short 
cuts, and take in ideas as unanalyzed wholes — has not 
greatly affected the "method of the recitation"; and it 
is this that makes school life so different from the 
life of the outside world, into which the children soon 
must go. Indifference to nascent stages and slavery 
to logical order are very largely responsible, in 
the opinion of the writer, for the loss of interest, and 
discouragement of the pupils, so greatly lamented. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 285 

Here again the line of least resistance has been followed. 
Associative cooperation in the lives of the children, 
helping them to develop and get ideas in their own in- 
dividual ways, is a very different problem from school- 
mastering. 

It is not the teachers who are primarily to blame for 
this condition, but the superintendents of school sys- 
tems. Supervision, originally intended to be an aid to 
teachers, has become an intolerable incubus. Teachers 
are supervised to desperation. The unobtrusive way 
in which the supervision is sometimes administered does 
not lessen its tyranny. Teachers are well aware that 
the suggestion of a method implies the expectation that 
it will be used. So strong is this feeling that, even in 
the instances where no compulsion is intended, teachers 
nevertheless regard the suggestion as mandatory. And 
this weakens the feeling of responsibility. "We cannot 
help ourselves; we must do things in this way," is a 
common remark of teachers. Modern business has 
developed a wholly different method. Managers are 
put in charge of departments, and the entire control is 
given into their hands. They know what results are 
expected, and that they are the ones who will be held 
responsible. If they do not succeed they are replaced 
by others; but the owners seldom give them a plan of 
detailed instructions. The result of this method has 
been the evolution of a body of splendid managers who, 
in many instances, understand the business better than 
the owners. It is the clerhs who work from detailed 
plans, and all that is wanted here is accuracy in 
following orders. Originality in them is not desired, 
and if by chance some happen to have any at the begin- 
ning, it is soon smoothed down to common mediocrity. 



286 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Now this is practically the condition of teachers. The 
superintendents are the managers, and the teachers are 
the clerks. 

This condition has had the effect that routine work 
always has, and so school teaching has become mech- 
anized. In city schools it is the organization that is 
praised. Plans of brilliant intricacy are worked out, 
and the chief work of the principals is to see that there 
is no jolt in the running of the machinery. The result 
is that a city may have a splendid system of schools, with 
any number of poor schools within the system. Those 
that do not deteriorate maintain their efficiency by re- 
sisting the mechanizing process, but such independent 
principals are eliminated as soon as it can be done 
without trouble. How to save their pupils from the 
evils of official formalism, while still conforming suffi- 
ciently to escape censure, is becoming more and more 
of a problem to enlightened teachers. The necessity of 
such evasion is pathetic. Superintendents are insisting 
that school boards shall not interfere in the selection of 
teachers, nor in matters that pertain to instruction, and 
in this they are unquestionably right; but the principle 
deserves more general application. Not only should 
superintendents be unhampered in their work, but the 
same freedom should be extended by them to their sub- 
ordinates. The argument with which one is always 
confronted when insisting upon this is that teachers are 
incompetent. Several things may be said in reply; 
first, all teachers are not incompetent, and, second, this 
method of procedure produces and preserves incom- 
petents. Those with the best minds either refuse to go 
into the work, or, if they do, finding themselves held 
under a deadening restraint, they withdraw as soon as 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 287 

they can find something else to do. Able young men 
are continually leaving teaching for work where their 
ability may find some range for action. Adaptation to 
environment is one of the fundamental laws of nature. 
The conditions to which the adaptation must be made 
are the selecting force, and determine who are the fit. 

In the instance under discussion the conditions that 
must be met select for survival the least original, those 
least qualified to act wisely through their own initiative. 
Men and women of independence and power will not 
continue in a position in which individuality must be 
submerged in obedience. Blind obedience is the prin- 
ciple of military operations where the purpose is the 
creation of a set of artificial and temporary conditions 
that shall overwhelm the enemy. Education, on the 
other hand, is concerned with growth and development, 
the conditions of which are given in the mental and 
physical organization of those to be educated. Educa- 
tion, above all else, must be flexible. Human nature is 
too variable to be adequately treated by mimeographed 
prescriptions. It is because of this that the organized 
machinery of systems of schools is so disastrous. It 
does not lend itself to differing needs. Man is afflicted 
with a curious mental scotoma. He inclines to think 
himself free from the biological laws to which he readily 
believes the lower animals subject. Yet adaptation is 
no less forceful in human than in animal society. 
When this is clearly understood and acted upon, there 
will be less waste of social and educational energy. 

We hear much about the necessity of waiting until 
people are educated up to opportunities before granting 
them, but no amount of preliminary education will ever 
bring the desired result so long as the opportunities 



288 MIND IN THP] MAKING 

themselves are withheld. Indeed, so potent is adapta- 
tion that the very training itself, though intended to fit 
for new responsibilities gradually succumbs to the 
subtle influences of prevailing conditions and drops to 
a lower level. That this has been the case with teach- 
ing casual observation will show. Teachers' institutes 
and other meetings, intended primarily to be educative, 
are frequently so stale that the more intelligent among 
the teachers openly say that they get little from them. 
Teachers have been forced to become official dem- 
onstrators. They are not supposed to have ideas, at 
least not about teaching; that is a privilege permitted 
solely to the managers. Only the pedagogy that bears 
the official stamp is allowed in their system. The func- 
tion of the teacher is to tie up the pedagogy in pack- 
ages suitable for each applicant for knowledge, but even 
here little freedom is allowed, since the instructor is 
given a definite amount of information, all carefully 
weighed out in the official scales, and is expected to dis- 
pose of it by the end of the term. The result is that 
some children receive more than they can carry away, 
while others would like more; but to yield to such little 
matters as individual differences is usually contrary to 
official pedagogy. 

The efficiency of the teaching force is seriously 
affected by the salaries that are paid. This subject has 
recently been investigated by a committee of the Na- 
tional Educational Association, and the report * was 
made to the Association at the July meeting, 1905. 

In 463 cities and towns of 8,000 population or over, 

' Report of the Committee on Salaries, Tenure, and Pensions of Public 
School Teachers in the United States. Submitted to the Council of the 
National Educational Association, March 7, 1905, and published July. 
1905. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 289 

New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston being 
excluded, the average salary for elementary teachers 
is $556 for women, and $653 for men. But even these 
low figures show only a part of the truth. In 14 of 
these cities the average salary of women teachers in 
elementary schools was less than $350; "in 64 cities it 
was $350 or over, but less than $450; in 125 cities, or 
26.4 per cent., it was $450 or over, but less than $500; 
in 61 cities it was $500 or over, but less than $600; in 
19 cities it was $600 or over, but less than $650; and 
in only 42 cities, or 8.9 per cent., was the average salary 
as much as $650." 

Taking up the minimum salaries paid to women 
teachers in elementary schools, the committee found 
that "in 64 cities some of the teachers received less than 
$300 a year; in 116 cities $300 or over, but less than 
$350; in 125 cities $350 or over, but less than $400; in 
89 cities $400 or over, but less than $450; in 38 cities 
$450 or over, but less than $500; in 26 cities $500 or 
over, but less than $600; and in 18 cities $600 or 
over. ... In 62.1 per cent, of the cities the minimum 
salary paid was less than $400, and in only 12.1 per 
cent, was it as high as $500." But the very low salaries 
were not characteristic of the smaller towns and cities 
only. "On the contrary, of the 39 cities with a popu- 
lation of 100,000 or over, 21 cities reported teachers in 
elementary schools in receipt of yearly salaries of $400 
or less." 

"The workman at common labor who has steady 
employment earns more in a year than many of the 
teachers in elementary schools. Thus a comparison of 
the weekly wages of municipal laborers on street and 
sewer work and the minimum yearly salaries of teachers 



290 MIND IN THE MAKING 

in elementary schools, in 47 cities, shows that, except 
in 4 cities, the laborer who has work for 50 weeks, say, 
earns more than the teacher. In many cases the 
laborer's pay under such conditions is greatly in excess 
of that of the teacher." The absurdity of the situation 
becomes more apparent when we remember, as the 
report shows, that this comparison is with the com- 
monest unskilled labor for which absolutely no prep- 
aration is required, "while in scarcely any city of im- 
portance can a man or woman obtain a position as 
teacher at even the minimum salary without some pre- 
vious experience at a lower salary, or some special 
preparation." The committee might have added that, 
in some cities, and the number is increasing, both 
special preparation and some previous experience are 
required. "In a majority of cities," the report con- 
tinues, "the minimum salary — that for regular teachers 
in their first year — is far below a fair living standard, and 
therefore too low to attract to the profession the best ma- 
terial — the prime essential for a strong teaching force." ^ 
This puts a very serious question squarely before the 
American people. With such salaries the wonder is 
that the quality of teaching is as good as it is. House- 
maids receive more than $200 a year in addition to 
room and board, and the union rate of wages for hod- 
carriers in New York State is $3 a day, or $900 for the 
year.^ It is edifying to talk of the pleasure derived 
from helping children to develop, but teachers, like 
other people, must live, and the joys of altruism 
do not buy clothes, food, or summer recreation to re- 

' Since the publication of the report, salaries have been increased in a 
few cities, but the advance has been so slight that even in those cities 
the situation has not been essentially improved. 

» Collier's, January 12, 1907. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 291 

build energy. One of the conditions of good teaching 
is opportunity for the teacher's continued mental 
growth, and this involves the expense of books, and 
lectures, and leisure for rest and travel. 

School boards should be educated to feel the neces- 
sity to their teachers of a periodical year of freedom for 
travel and study, which colleges are coming to recog- 
nize as essential for persistent efficiency. The assump- 
tion that elementary and secondary school subjects are 
so simple as to require no relaxation and little, if any, 
preparation is a relic of early days when people thought 
of school teaching as lesson hearing. The larger in- 
terpretation of education, slowly winning its way, re- 
quires an enormous expenditure of energy, and con- 
scientious teachers soon wear out under the strain. 
Nervous teachers produce irritable children. The sab- 
batical year on half-pay would give opportunity for in- 
tellectual refreshment, and the school would be con- 
tinually rejuvenated by the infusion of new knowledge and 
enthusiasm. The inclination of a few teachers to spend 
the year in other remunerative work, which has some- 
times cropped out where the plan has been tried, could 
be checked by making the half-pay conditional on the 
use of the time for intellectual and physical development. 

With salaries commensurate to the broad needs of 
teachers, with periodical off-years for physical preserva- 
tion and mental growth, and freedom of initiative for 
intellectual expansion, good results may be demanded, 
and the incompetent would gradually be eliminated. 
By encouraging the imitatively and clerically inclined, 
the present system favors the incompetents and gives 
them an advantage in the struggle for continuance in 
the work. So long as we are satisfied with mediocrity. 



292 MIND IN THE MAKING 

that is what we shall get. As a matter of fact, public 
school teachers, as a class, are exceedingly conscientious, 
and anxious to do their work in the best way. Their 
economic dependence, however, forces them to ac- 
quiesce in the methods approved by those on whom 
their position depends. Consequently, they are feeble 
in initiative, looking to their superiors for guidance. 
Now, as we have said, those in high places discourage 
departure from established practices. They feel that 
they have vested rights in the prevailing ideas. The 
same opposition to the new has delayed the progress 
of every science. In each instance there has been the 
same investigation by individuals, and the same resist- 
ance on the part of those in positions of influence to 
views in conflict with ideas to which habit has given 
the semblance of revealed truth. The story of reforms 
suppressed and discoveries strangled at their birth is a 
long and sad chapter in the growth of human intelli- 
gence. The spontaneous generationists laughed at Pas- 
teur and derided him while he was quietly working at 
the experiments which in the end were to put them to 
confusion. "I am afraid," wrote one scientist, "that 
the experiments you quote, M. Pasteur, will turn against 
you. . . . The world into which you wish to take us 
is really too fantastic." * This is not unlike the charge 
made to-day against educational fads. Even after 
Pasteur had shown "that there is nothing in the air 
that is conditional to life, except the germs that it 
carries," a noted scientist advised the inquiring "to 
accept the doctrine of spontaneous generation adopted 
by so many men of genius." ^ 

> Reni Vallery-Radot's Life of Pasteur, Vol. I, p. 129. 
'^Ibid., p. 122-123. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 293 

Robert Livingston, former Minister to France and a 
friend of Robert Fulton, induced the New York Legis- 
lature to introduce a bill encouraging the invention of 
a steamboat that could run at least four miles an hour. 
A member of the New York Senate at that time has 
given a picture of the Senate's attitude toward such an 
innovation. Throughout the session it was the stand- 
ing subject of ridicule, "and whenever there was a 
disposition in any of the younger members to indulge 
in a little levity they would call up the steamboat bill, 
that they might divert themselves at the expense of the 
project and its advocates." ^ 

Benjamin Franklin's paper on the "Sameness of 
Lightning with Electricity " was greeted with the same 
merriment when read before the Royal Society, the 
members roaring with laughter at so absurd an idea.^ 

That opposition to progress in scientific subjects is 
less noticeable than formerly is due to the astonishing 
rapidity with which discoveries have followed one an- 
other in recent years. This has wrought a profound 
change in the mental attitude of people toward physical 
phenomena. The very profusion of discoveries has 
forced us to a realization of a new fact in nature — that 
remarkable new interpretations are to be expected, 
that they are in the nature of things. But, curiously, 
this new fact has been essentially, though unconsciously, 
limited to physical phenomena. 

Educational reforms are not so demonstrable as the 
"Sameness of Lightning with Electricity," and it is 
chiefly for this reason that "experience" continues to 
impress us with the sacredness of its mysteries. The 

■ The Life of Robert Fulton, by Cadwallader D. Golden, 1817, p. 56. 
2 Franklin's Autobiography (the Century Co. edition), pp. 269, 270. 



294 MIND IN THE MAKING 

educational situation, however, has undoubtedly under- 
gone a change in this respect. Robert Southey would 
not be expelled from school to-day for writing an 
article against flogging, nor would he, because of such 
expulsion, be refused admission to college, and it may 
be doubted whether the mistake of the Boston school- 
masters in issuing their famous "Remarks" concerning 
the Seventh Annual Report of Horace Mann could 
be repeated. Still, there is a contentment with present 
conditions that is most unfavorable to educational prog- 
ress. Education is still in the emotional stage from 
which the natural sciences have just emerged. Teach- 
ers feel that their method is a part of themselves, and 
they resent any criticism as a personal matter. 

The transitional stage through which education is 
now passing has left great uncertainty regarding the 
treatment of children, and an anonymous "old Ger- 
man American" ' holds that the chief cause of our 
trouble is the opposition of children in a democracy to 
authority. We concede that many school problems 
are greatly simplified in countries where unquestioning 
submission to authority is the first virtue. Under the 
conviction that the finest types of men and women are 
not reared under conditions of submission, control 
through mere external authority is passing from our 
schools because it does not harmonize with the Amer- 
ican character. The German mental attitude has its 
origin in the belief that authority is divinely given. 
Even if the strict acceptance of this idea has been 
abandoned, German life and character are still greatly 
subject to it. Americans, on the other hand, realize 

' " Warum kann die amerikanische Volksschule nicht leisten was die 
deutsche leistet?" 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 295 

that law and authority are their creation. They made 
them, and they can break or change them. The behef 
that governments are instituted among men to secure 
Hfe, Uberty, and the pursuit of happiness introduced a 
new racial element that has deeply shaped the evolution 
of American character and it would be an exception to 
the effect of environment so curious as to well nigh 
constitute a monstrosity, if boys could grow up amid 
criticism of law and order and public officials so 
common as to attract attention only by its absence, 
without applying it to those immediately over them; 
and if at times they tend to emphasize liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness to a disproportionate extent, they 
but emulate many adults who cannot reasonably offer 
the excuse of lack of restraining social and other altru- 
istic impulses, which are not expected to exert a con- 
trolling influence on immature minds. It is a mistake, 
however, to lament this independence in thought and 
action of American boys. It is fundamental to Amer- 
ican character, and the success of democratic insti- 
tutions depends upon its growth. Men who are 
courageous and aggressive toward civic and national 
corruption and usurpation cannot be made out of timid, 
servile boys. For a democracy to look continually to 
monarchical countries for educational principles is 
quite as shortsighted as to turn to them for principles 
of national executive policy. The American boy is 
rebellious against authority when it does not appeal to 
his sense of justice, but that he can accomplish wonders 
when he finds himself in harmony with it, self-govern- 
ment among boys has demonstrated. 

Perhaps the most important contribution of race- 
psychology to education is the fact that educational 



296 MIND IN THE MAKING 

problems grow out of the evolution and environment of 
a people. Each race, in following its own evolutional 
line of development, feels certain educational needs 
that arise out of its own peculiar conditions. This is 
forgotten by those who are continually looking to 
Germany for educational enlightenment. To the 
German boy, crude authority is perfectly natural. It 
awakens in him no resentment because it is drunk in at 
his mother's breast. For this reason he works easily 
and effectively under constraint, while the American 
child does his best work in the consciousness of free- 
dom. It is a race difference. In American schools, 
therefore, the efficiency of teachers rests largely upon 
personal influence. Since they can no longer force 
their pupils to study by the weight of authority exem- 
plified in the rod, their success depends upon ability to 
arouse in the children a desire to study. Hence con- 
ditions affecting the pupils' health or emotions, directly 
or indirectly, are of special significance to American 
teachers. The boy who does not "feel right," be the 
cause physical or mental, will not do his best work. 

After all, the assumption that authority is of one kind 
is a fundamental error. It is customary to look upon 
external constraint that commands instant obedience 
to its behests as the only real authority. But this 
method of control is the crude, primitive sort, and 
originated in the fascination of display of power. As 
man evolves, he learns to depend less upon implied force 
and exacted fear, and more upon personality that wins 
acquiescence because of the confidence it inspires, as 
well as from the reasonableness of its demands. This 
is a higher kind of power. 

Education, we have insisted, means a great deal more 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 297 

than proficiency in a set of studies. Stated in its lowest 
terms, it implies the ability to interpret situations, to 
see things in their right proportion, and it is just here 
that the excessively tutelary method which grew out 
of a misunderstanding of youth breaks down. Children 
possess a native feeling of responsibility that may be 
depended upon if its presence is seriously assumed. 
The tendency of modern life has been to prolong the 
period of helplessness. Primitive children develop much 
more quickly than civilized boys and girls, and while 
there are doubtless good phylogenetic reasons for this 
difference, it is nevertheless an open question whether 
modern town and city life does not unnecessarily 
prolong irresponsibility. Much has been said lately 
about short cuts in development, but the changes usu- 
ally proposed have been severely artificial, determined 
wholly by conditions external to the child. Investiga- 
tions in the mutations of animals and plants have 
clearly proven that they are capable of much more 
rapid change than was formerly thought possible, but 
it should be remembered that in this experimental work 
these changes are always directed toward a specific 
end. Burbank sets himself to bring about certain def- 
inite results, and all forms that do not subserve these 
ends are destroyed. This marks a distinct difference 
between education and forced biological mutation. 
The educator cannot destroy children who do not ex- 
hibit the qualities he seeks. If it were his function to 
predetermine ends, and then to create new mutations 
leading toward them, he could not construct his type 
by effacing the discordant individuals. But the edu- 
cator is limited, in the ends that he may pre-elect, by 
the complexity of human life. The very child whose 



298 MIND IN THE MAKING 

qualities he disapproves of may be the germ of a man 
much beyond his mental reach. The teacher must be 
very guarded in dictating to nature. Even if the forces 
of crossing and selection at the disposal of the botanist 
could be controlled in the case of man, some of the best 
products of nature might be weeded out by such inter- 
vention. In a region so subtle there is difficulty in de- 
termining the particular variation best adapted to the 
broadest conditions of human progress. To fit solely 
for the immediate present, for example, would evidently 
be unwise as leaving out of account change of environ- 
ment. It does not look to the future. 

It is just in the uncertainty of short cuts of this kind, 
however, that the educational method for shortening the 
process of human development emerges. Children 
should be surrounded with conditions that are favorable 
to the fullest individualization, which is bringing to 
fulfilment all the natural variations with which we are 
born. But in this process the sort of selection made, 
as well as the time of utilization of the environmental 
material must be largely left to them. In other words, 
great possible mutations are latent in children, but are 
suppressed by an education that keeps them tied to a 
stake rope. Such a range is too restricted to allow 
great diversity. It is by the possibility of free indi- 
vidualization that deferred instincts in the lower animals 
are converted into real forces in their development, and 
man should not utilize less what nature gives him. 

The influence of suggestion through environment has 
never received its proper recognition in education. 
Teachers want to play a more conspicuous part in the 
mentation of their pupils. In the early history of our 
country, education was little developed, and this forced 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 299 

the let-alone, suggestive method upon our fathers. 
Their compulsory and, in the nature of the case, un- 
conscious acquiescence in it is the explanation of the 
fact that so much was accomplished with so little 
"schooling." To-day boys and girls of the well-to-do 
classes are largely shielded from the necessity of think- 
ing and acting, and this protection tends to prolong arti- 
ficially the period of helplessness. Changed condi- 
tions have caused this, and in so doing have put a new 
problem upon the schools. The contention that the 
duty of the public schools ends with giving good instruc- 
tion in the studies of the course is an error, because these 
studies touch life at comparatively few points, and be- 
sides, much of this information is forgotten. Informa- 
tion, in itself of little effective value, is only a means 
for attaining the larger educational end — the power 
adequately to interpret ideas and situations, and the 
development of will to act on these interpretations. 

But as yet the schools are preeminently adapted 
by their organization to acquisition, and are very im- 
perfectly fitted for the cultivation of growth in con- 
scious control. We inherit our school-room methods 
from a period when information was the chief need, 
or, at any rate, was so regarded. A very general phe- 
nomenon in organisms is the persistence of structures 
adapted to a previous condition which no longer exists. 
In human society these survivals are seen in many 
social forms whose antiquity wins unmerited reverence. 
Teaching is no exception to this law. So we continue 
under much the same theory of school-room organiza- 
tion, fancying great progress when a few new devices 
are invented, or we have altered the wording of the for- 
mulas. Yet the boy enters a very different sort of life 



300 MIND IN THE MAKING 

when he leaves school to-day from that of even fifty 
years ago, and recent investigations have greatly 
changed and enlarged the earlier views of mental 
growth. But these facts have not correspondingly 
changed the method of the school-room. Every one 
admits, theoretically, that children learn by doing, but 
their activity is still mainly limited to certain subjects 
that are attached like an appendix to the educational 
alimentary canal. It is the antique way to sit in front 
of a class and ask questions, and it is pretty apt to make 
helpless parrots of the pupils. 

The rational method is to work with the students, 
inspiring them with longing to delve into things for 
themselves and make their contribution to the common 
fund of knowledge to be discussed and clarified in the 
recitation. The didactic method belongs to the Middle 
Ages. It still dominates our schools, though the condi- 
tions that made it serviceable have long since passed. 
Mental expansion of the teachers themselves is the first 
step toward removing the mediaeval debris. They will 
then investigate with their pupils, the school-room will 
become an educational laboratory, and activity will 
not be limited to the manual-training department. But 
this new fertility of teachers postulates lifting teaching 
to a higher plane by doubling the teaching force of 
the nation, insisting rigorously that all teachers shall 
be persons of advanced development, equal to these 
high demands, and, as before stated, by remunerating 
on a scale that will win such persons and induce brains 
of the first rank of ability to elect and prepare for the 
work. Teaching will then cease to be looked upon as 
the most available point of outlook for finding life's 
vocation in some other field. 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 301 

Science laboratories, whose attachment to high 
schools added a new organ for mental nutrition, have 
never passed, in many schools, beyond the rudimentary 
stage. Directions for work, so minute as to remove all 
need for individual initiative, are given, and the chief 
thing required of the pupils is to do what they are told 
to do, and to see what they are told to see. So con- 
veniently, many times, are these directions prepared, 
that pupils may work them backward, and so secure 
much greater accuracy in the results, and with less ex- 
penditure of time. 

Lovejoy,* in a series of questions submitted to the 
entering freshman class in one of the leading colleges of 
the Middle West, found astonishing ignorance con- 
cerning some commonplaces of knowledge. In an 
English class of twenty-eight, fifteen were unable to 
name six living writers of English, and the list of "the 
most interesting and valuable" books which they had 
read included only four which were not fiction, while 
of the twenty novels mentioned only eight or nine were 
of literary importance. Equally surprising were the 
answers of thirty-eight to questions in American his- 
tory. Four were unable to name any general upon 
either side in the Civil War, while many of those who 
made the attempt were curiously confused, some nam- 
ing Lincoln and Jackson as Northern generals. Less 
than half the class were able to give even approximately 
the cause of the recent Russo-Japanese War. Alto- 
gether, the answers showed very limited interests, and 
indicated that the high-school soil is too barren for a 
vigorous growth of enthusiasms. 

■ The Bulletin of the Washington University Association, Vol. V, 1907, 
p. 105. 



302 MIND IN THE MAKING 

Closely connected with this is the helplessness in 
college of high-school graduates when left to their own 
resources. As a rule, they are unable to work out any 
problem by themselves. They do not even know how 
to get the information needed for its solution. This 
same helplessness is the basis of the complaint of busi- 
ness men who take them into their employ. Their 
school life has been characterized by complaisant con- 
formity to directions, learning, so far as required, what 
was put before them, but uninspired to wander from 
the beaten track and bring some contribution of their 
own. It is simpler to follow, especially when it leads 
to good examination marks, and pupils rarely reach out 
farther in their work than is required by the standard of 
their tests. But the college is little better. Here, also, 
is enthusiasm chilled by the same schoolish ideals, and 
study rarely rises above successful imitation. Informa- 
tion is prescribed in set doses, and the standing of the 
students depends upon the methodical regularity with 
which they take their medicine. Some have adopted 
a saner plan, but it is still decidedly true that a very 
small fraction of college graduates are sent out fitted 
for action in the world. They have to learn all that 
at great cost afterward. The college, as well as the 
public school, misconceives its task. 

A factor in perpetuating these conditions is the 
idolatry of examinations and percentages, to which we 
have already referred. The fundamental error under 
which schools are working to-day, is the feeling that 
they must have something which can be displayed as 
evidence of progress. The author's studies in the learn- 
ing process demonstrate that learners are not always 
ready to express what they have acquired. There are 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 303 

stages in the growth of learning when their knowl- 
edge refuses to reveal itself for show, and this may 
be a reason why so many boys of future eminence 
have been dullards at school. Their greater natures, 
besides rebelling against the innutritions pabulum 
offered, did not grow in the examinable way. Per- 
haps, also, this is why those who enter college with 
conditions stand at least an equal chance of ranking 
high as compared with the seemingly brighter, uncon- 
ditioned students, as Thorndike ^ found in Columbia 
University. 

The boy at all stages is estimated from some point of 
view which adults think of vital importance, and this 
is fatal. With teachers the favorite unit of value is 
ability to acquire certain species of knowledge in a 
certain definite way. This standardizing of men- 
tality leads to mutilation of boy nature, and he carries 
the wounds through life. Boys are decidedly individ- 
ualistic. They all have points of approach easy of 
access if the right path is taken, but they may be un- 
assailable from other sides. But these points of access 
are not the same in different individuals, and failure to 
recognize this wastes perhaps half of the energy ap- 
plied by society to education. The grown man forgets 
the steps by which he has progressed. He reads back 
into his childhood the motives of present, mature years. 
Childhood's ideas, therefore, seem trivial to him; and 
yet to expect adult motives to appeal to children is un- 
reasonable, because the events needed to give them 
validity have not been experienced. One of the high- 
est problems of education is to furnish these experiences 

'J. McKeen Cattell: "Examinations, Grades and Credits," Popular 
Science Monthly, Vol. LXVI. 1905. p. 369. 



304 MIND IN THE MAKING 

without the losses that their later acquisition in the 
outside world would bring. 

The teacher's work then is highly constructive. No 
longer the austere ogre that excoriates the evil spirits 
of the race inherited in children, he fraternizes with 
these "evil" tendencies and makes them his allies in 
promoting growth from evolutional primitiveness. In 
this way he wins his pupils to their studies through 
native interests, watches each new nascent impulse to 
take it at its flood, and so makes the school life one of 
cooperative activity, in which each pupil plays his 
part with zest because his individual abilities and 
impulses are the point from which he starts. His 
enthusiasm continues keen because he does what his 
ability permits. Instead of marking time till others 
may catch up, or hurrying forward beyond his strength, 
he works naturally to his limit, conscious always of his 
contribution to the production of the whole. And this, 
too, would bridge the chasm between school and the 
world outside, by removing it. Children would be put 
more upon their own responsibility, seeking and obtain- 
ing help when it is needed — the time when it is most 
effective for development. The acquisition of facts 
whose significance the children do not see, and many of 
which have little, would then cease to characterize 
education. What is learned would be used in what is 
done, and what is done determined by the stage each has 
attained in his development, with thought both to his 
larger racial life and future modern needs. When educa- 
tion is thus rationalized, the personality of children will 
not be smoothed down to common and uninteresting 
homogeneity, as the present system of mass education 
with its mistaken idea of educational economy seems to 



SCHOOL-MASTERING EDUCATION 305 

require. Friction-energy — energy misused, and there- 
fore creating the demand for discipline — will then be 
taken up and largely disappear in the self-control that 
experiments have shown springs spontaneously from the 
growing feeling of individual responsibility. And this 
feeling of responsibility will come from educators lay- 
ing aside the lofty pedagogical attitude and substituting 
that of mutual help, confidence, and fellowship with the 
student, in place of mastership. 

But after education has been perfected as much as 
possible, we have still before us the undermining fact 
that a great host of the children of the nation can only 
slightly profit by it, because they are too poor in a land 
superabundantly rich. There is, as we pointed out, 
besides the children who now abandon the school be- 
cause under present methods the schools repel them, 
another wide class, the children of the not-well-off, who 
must go to work. And we said that, no matter how 
much education is improved, it will not reach the 
majority of this great class. What about them, and 
what about the chances of free democratic institutions 
while such conditions exist? 

We need only survey the factories and the homes of 
the working class to see the inherent antagonism of 
our industrial system to education. The legitimate 
things of life are not obtained even when all the chil- 
dren in a family work, and education has to be sacri- 
ficed. This is so, as well, of many who would be ranked 
in the middle social class. How, then, is education to 
do its work of preserving democracy ? It is a task too 
large. And in this stress it demands an industrial 
system in which all can be well educated. It cannot 
accept anything less and do the work required of it — 



306 MIND IN THE MAKING 

preserve free institutions. Yet to-day great numbers 
can hardly be educated at all because of the necessity 
of earning a living. And this sinister necessity is due 
to the industrial system, for there is an immense plethora 
of wealth, enough to educate all amply and highly, and 
to provide for all other legitimate needs besides. 

What is education to do? It is required by society 
to preserve democracy, and the economical order that 
has grown up forbids it to do so. Plainly, its duty is to 
correct the economic order until education has its rights 
and can do its work; until education can reach all in 
full measure; until it can preserve the foundations of 
popular government. 

Does this require every educator to be a specialist in 
social problems ? It does to the extent of knowing how 
the distribution of wealth and income of society can be 
rearranged so as to permit all children and youths to 
receive a full education. This much is a sine qua non 
of the educational understanding. And it may also be 
added from the deeper philosophical view-point, that, 
since the purpose of education is to prepare the young 
to live in society, since this is why we educate, it is 
curious to suppose that an educator can do this who 
does not comprehend society and its problems. 

The outlook of education here traced is somewhat 
commensurate with its true nature. Education is not 
mere schoolmastering. Schoolmastering is one func- 
tion — perhaps a very small one. There is evidently a 
larger conception of education to be developed. Let 
us now consider it. 



CHAPTER X 

MAN'S EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 

The purpose of education among those animals that 
train their young is adaptation to environment. Man's 
endeavor is the same, but with the growth of human 
society and of knowledge his environment has pro- 
foundly altered, a fact that education has only partially 
recognized, and this alteration has made it necessary 
to reinterpret adaptation. Among the lower animals, 
nature secures the necessary results mainly through 
instinct. 

Jennings found ^ that paramecia collect around a 
mass of bacteria, pushing and crowding one another 
in apparent effort to reach the food; and Binet,^ in one 
of those delightful, imaginative flights in which even 
the scientific mind at times is wont to recreate, would 
have us believe that most, if not all, of the higher in- 
tellectual processes, including choice and volition, form 
part of the mental life of micro-organisms. But we are 
clearly drawing inferences beyond our right, if we assume 
that action here has any other cause than the necessity 
which selection has made the conditions of survival. 
These organisms must do certain things and do them 

•" Psychology of a Protozoan," American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 
X, 1899, p. 503. 

2 Binet: The Psychic Life of Micro- Organisms, 1899, p. 61. 

307 



308 MIND IN THE MAKING 

always, under penalty of extinction, and perhaps this 
is the reason why these same paramecia begin to gather 
around innutritions substances quite as surely as around 
nutritious. The attraction which a dilute solution of 
carbon dioxide has for them would then, as Jennings 
has suggested, be due to the fact that this product of 
organic waste is found wherever paramecia assemble; 
therefore, as they gather more often than otherwise 
around food, and natural selection demands that they 
lose no chance of finding nutriment, carbon dioxide 
becomes a blind call to food. Instinct is thus organic 
behavior originating in the necessity of adaptation and 
directed in its course through the exigencies of the 
environment by natural selection. Whitman* has ob- 
served that our fresh-water salamander, Necturtis, re- 
acts to any object quietly introduced into the water, 
as though it were food. If so small an object as a 
needle, he says, be brought into contact with the sur- 
face of the water, Necturus instantly turns toward it. 
The reason is that the animal receives exactly the same 
stimulus from a foreign object that touches or passes 
through the water as it does from that which serves as 
food. In other words, the animal responds primarily to 
water undulations, regardless of their cause, because it 
is through such undulations that it receives notice of the 
presence of food. In its most typical form instinct is 
thus seen to be chiefly a matter of animal organization, 
and the response to stimuli to be largely mechanical. 
This makes stable conditions necessary if it is to meet 
educational needs. But even here there is a little varia- 
tion in the manner of reaction. Necturus has learned 

' Biological Lectures from the Marine Laboratory at Wood's HoU, Massa- 
chusetts. 1898, p. 303. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 309 

to discriminate somewhat between experiences, for, ac- 
cording to Whitman, "there is unmistakably a power of 
inhibition strong enough to counteract the strongest 
motive to act — the hunger of a starving animal in the 
presence of food."^ But such limited power of reac- 
tion does not go far, and it will meet the needs of ani- 
mals only so long as their life is of the simplest sort. 
They are probably capable of few adaptations, and 
these must be made at an enormous cost of time and 
life. But as life becomes more complex and less regu- 
lar these instinctive responses do not answer. Animals 
must now learn to remember, and their actions must 
be guided by past experiences of threatening disaster, 
else they cannot survive in the struggle. 

Not many experiments have been made on the edu- 
cability of animals low in the scale, but fishes have been 
taught to refrain from attacking minnows that are their 
usual food, by separating them with a glass partition 
extending across the aquarium until the larger fishes 
learn by repeated bumps on the nose that the little ones 
are not to be eaten.^ Thorndike^ has shown also that 
the minnow, Fundulus, can learn to find its way through 
a series of three partitions, each with an opening so 
located as to make the journey circuitous, and that it 
gradually improves on its previous record by eliminating 
blunders until finally it learns to go directly to each 
opening. While we do not know much about the men- 
tal processes here, it grows increasingly harder to ex- 
plain action solely by the neural mechanism. Ex- 

1 Loc. cit., p. 305. 

2 See statement of Moebius's experiment in Darwin's Descent of Man, 
2d ed., p. 76, and Triplett's "The Educability of the Perch," American 
Journal of Psychology, Vol. XII, p. 354. 

3 American Naturalist. Vol. XXXIII, p. 923. 



310 MIND IN THE MAKING 

perience is evidently taking a more active part in the 
animal's life. The nervous system is becoming more 
flexible, more adaptable. 

Recent observation has somewhat modified our views 
regarding action among lower animals. Jennings' 
studies* indicate that the method of trial and error is 
common even in one-celled organisms. This method, 
wherever found, unquestionably involves in some de- 
gree the utilization of experience. Such creatures can 
no longer be considered as merely reflex organisms in 
the presence of new needs and difiiculties, or, if we 
still designate their action in this way, the interpretation 
of "reflex" must be profoundly altered. Throughout 
the animal series improvement in the reaction to en- 
vironment seems to signify greater nervous flexibility in 
dealing with experience rather than a complete change 
of method. In their fascinating paper ^ on the habits of 
solitary wasps, the Peckhams tell of one who in filling up 
her nest "put her head down into it and bit away the 
loose earth from the sides, letting it fall to the bottom of 
the burrow, and then, after a quantity had accumulated, 
jammed it down with her head. She then brought 
earth from the outside and passed it in, afterwards 
biting more from the sides. When, at last, the filling 
was level with the ground, she brought a quantity of 
fine grains of dirt to the spot, and picking up a small 
pebble in her mandibles, used it as a hammer, pound- 
ing them down with rapid strokes, thus making this 
spot as hard and firm as the surrounding surface." 

' Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower Organisms, p. 237; 
Carnegie Institution, Washington, 1904. Behavior of Lower Organisms, 
1906. 

2 "On the Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps," by Geo. W. 
and Elizabeth G. Peckham, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History 
Survey, Bulletin No. 2, Scientific Series No. 1, Madison, Wis., 1898. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 311 

Soon "she had dropped her stone and was bringing 
more earth," ^ when she again picked up the pebble 
and pounded that which was brought until all was 
hard. 

The power to inhibit, so that the same action does 
not always follow the same stimulus under the same 
circumstances, which was observed in Necturus, indi- 
cates, perhaps, the first break in the mechanism of 
primitive instincts. The part that experience plays in 
the animal's life is becoming more immediate and 
direct. Just how much consciousness is involved in 
this, or, indeed, whether there is any, we do not know. 
Investigation has shown ^ that in man consciousness of 
means is not essential to the utilization of experience, 
and there is certainly no reason for thinking it more 
necessary to the lower animals. 

In the variability of instinct, also, we find mechanical 
organization less domineering, and in the study of 
wasps, to which we have just referred, the one pre- 
eminent, unmistakable, and ever-present fact is variabil- 
ity. "Variability in every particular — in the shape of 
the nest and the manner of digging it, in the condition 
of the nest (whether closed or open) when left tem- 
porarily, in the method of stinging their prey, in the 
degree of malaxation, in the manner of carrying the 
victim, in the way of closing the nest, and last, and most 
important of all, in the condition produced in the vic- 
tims of the stinging," some of them dying "long before 
the larva is ready to begin on them, while others live 
long past the time at which they would have been at- 



> Loc. cit., pp. 22, 23. 

'Swift: "The Psychology of Learning," American Journal of Psychol- 
ogy, Vol. XIV, p. 217. 



312 MIND IN THE MAKING 

tacked and destroyed" had not the investigation "in- 
terfered with the natural course of events."^ In this 
breaking away from the inherited way of doing things 
we seem to have a sort of organic initiative which, if 
we may not call it inteUigence, must, after all, develop 
into it. 

Observations on higher animals have been numerous, 
and Darwin quotes with approval a statement of lleng- 
ger that when he first gave eggs to his monkeys in 
Paraguay, "they smashed them, and thus lost much of 
their contents; afterward they gently hit one end 
against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell 
with their fingers."^ Kinnaman,^ in an extended study 
of the intelligence of two monkeys, found that they 
could learn to manipulate a complex series of locks and 
latches on a box, and that they made some progress in 
choosing better methods by eliminating useless acts and 
in making short cuts. He also tested men with the 
same apparatus, and found that some were slower than 
the monkeys in finding how to open the box. While 
there was no evidence of ability to count, one of the 
monkeys could recognize position as far as three and 
the other as far as six. 

All this is a clear advance on the mental processes 
of lower animals, which cannot be explained solely by 
the mechanical response of a better organized nervous 
system. The change from the animal's customary be- 
havior is too great and the variations too sudden for 
mechanical organization to account for them. And yet 
Kinnaman's report shows little method in it all. The 



» Loc. cit., p. 30. 

2 Descent of Man, 2d ed., p. 78. 

3 Ameriran Journal of Psychology, Vol. XIII, pp. 98 and 173. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 313 

monkeys knew enough to know when they had failed, 
which is more than can be said of the fishes until it had 
been battered into their nervous system through re- 
peated blows on their heads, and they gradually im- 
proved on their method by making short cuts. But 
Thorndike's fishes also showed this improvement, 
though much more slowly. And this seems to mark 
an important difference in mental life. Monkeys do 
not need to wait until a certain mode of behavior has 
been worked into the mechanism of their organism by 
the operation of natural selection as do paramecia, nor 
is it necessary that the external constraint, which en- 
courages inhibition, be continued for so long a time 
as in the case of fishes. But, after all, the reasoning of 
monkeys seems to be of the same associative sort as 
that of fishes, and there is certainly no convincing evi- 
dence that they are able to get beyond this. Kinnaman 
thought that their action indicated generic images 
which enabled them to carry over something from a 
previous experience to a new situation, but we have 
already seen that even in man consciousness of the 
process is not necessary to the utilization of experience, 
and it is difficult to see what a generic image of which 
we are unconscious could be. Indeed, on the theory 
of evolution, consciousness as an originating force in 
the learning process would seem to be much less neces- 
sary to the lower animals than to man, and the farther 
down the series we go the less important would it be- 
come, until, among micro-organisms, we cannot speak 
of conscious adaptation without greatly overstepping 
the bounds of scientific accuracy. So far as the evi- 
dence goes, learning among the lower animals is strictly 
a matter of association. The more intelligent of them 



314 MIND IN THE MAKING 

appreciate the failure of a method more quickly than the 
others, and the discomfort resulting from it exerts a 
depressant effect upon the whole neuro-muscular sys- 
tem which, as we have seen, tends to break up the in- 
cipient coordinations involved in the original action, and 
even to obliterate their neural effects. All this, of 
course, reacts against repetition. Success, on the other 
hand, is attended by a pleasurable feeling, and every 
one has observed the joyous look of animals capable of 
expressing their emotions, when they have accomplished 
what they have been trying to do. These pleasurable 
feelings, in turn, increase the muscular tonicity which 
always tends to motor discharge, and this results in 
a partial reinervation of the coordinated group of 
muscles that were involved in the original movement. 
This naturally deepens the existing neural effect and 
promotes the repetition of the movement that occa- 
sioned it. 

So far as our present state of knowledge permits us 
to draw conclusions, the intellectual difference between 
man and the lower animals consists primarily in just 
this difference between associative reasoning on the 
one hand, and, on the other, inference in which the 
connection is obscured, by time or space, or by the com- 
plexity of the elements involved. And here, as before, 
the part that experience plays in determining action is 
the measure of intellect, only now its influence has 
been enormously multiplied. Articulate speech has 
enabled man to organize his experiences and transmit 
what he has learned, and it is not improbable that the 
higher psychical processes involved in reasoning owe to 
this human acquisition their development, if not their 
origin. Speech has greatly accelerated adaptation — by 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 315 

no means an unimportant factor in the rapid changes 
of man's experience, since through it we learn from 
others that which may benefit or injure, and so avoid 
what might mean destruction of the species. And 
then, too, by enlarging the sum of experiences, it has 
greatly increased the facility in acquisition and assimila- 
tion which play so important a role in human prog- 
ress. 

Learning in man, whether it be a new adaptation to 
a changed situation or the acceptance of an intellectual 
truth or moral principle, depends much upon the con- 
tent of the individual mind, and this assumes infinitely 
greater importance in man than in the lower animals 
because of the immense complications of his environ- 
ment. With animals this content embraces, at most, 
relation to the physical world and to other animals, 
but with man the physical world means and includes 
much more. It grows until it embraces the universe, 
and the relation to others widens till, from a simple 
physical relation, it involves the action of men on the 
highest plane of consciousness. Education in man is 
to fit his offspring for all this — for the most perfect at- 
tainable life in this complicated and ever-growing phys- 
ical and psychical environment. We have to educate 
for an essentially new universe, and the demand for 
studies that will be directly useful in life, now becom- 
ing so energetic, while one strong expression of the 
growing consciousness of this need, is yet an utterly 
inadequate expression of it. 

Clearly, education through instinct, nature's way, be- 
comes then wholly insufficient for man. Its method of 
adaptation is too slow, when physical and psychical 
conditions change so rapidly. Besides, it costs enor- 



316 MIND IN THE MAKING 

mously. The herring lays twenty thousand eggs, the 
oyster upward of sixteen million, while the conger-eel 
requires the enormous number of fifteen million an- 
nually to save itself from annihilation/ Marshall and 
Brooks estimate that if you start with one oyster pro- 
ducing sixteen million eggs, half of which are females, 
and let them go on increasing at the same rate for five 
years there would be oysters enough, if we estimate 
them as shells, to make a mass more than eight times 
the size of the earth.^ As we descend the animal series 
these facts become still more startling. "Certain bac- 
teria multiply so rapidly that the descendants of a single 
individual, if allowed to multiply unhindered for three 
days, would be represented by the figures 47,000,000,- 
000,000."=' 

Among lower animals the individual is of little im- 
portance because infinite numbers can be produced, 
and the cost does not matter much; but in the human 
world the individual has become of supreme importance. 
It is costly to vitality to bring even one to maturity, and 
expensive in every way to train him. Besides,, the 
worth of a human being is recognized as permanent. 
A fine individual is of the highest value to the whole. 
The best are pioneers to a higher level. Superior in- 
dividuals create a good society, and a superior society, 
in turn, is a prime factor in the production of the best 
type of individuals. 

With the lower animals the purpose is adaptation to 
environment, a strictly biological end, but the growth of 
knowledge and culture has introduced a higher element 

' C. J. Marshall: Lectures on the Darwinian Theory, New York, 1900, 
p. 39. 

2 Lac. cit. pp. 39, 40. W. K. Brooks: The Oyster, p. 50. 
' H. W. Conn: The Method of Evolntinn, p. 53. 



304 MIND IN THE MAKING 

without the losses that their later acquisition in the 
outside world would bring. 
*f~" The teacher's work then is highly constructive. No 
longer the austere ogre that excoriates the evil spirits 
of the race inherited in children, he fraternizes with 
these "evil" tendencies and makes them his allies in 
promoting growth from evolutional primitiveness. In 
this way he wins his pupils to their studies through 
native interests, watches each new nascent impulse to 
take it at its flood, and so makes the school life one of 
cooperative activity, in which each pupil plays his 
part with zest because his individual abilities and 
impulses are the point from which he starts. His 
enthusiasm continues keen because he does what his 
ability permits. Instead of marking time till others 
may catch up, or hurrying forward beyond his strength, 
he works naturally to his limit, conscious always of his 
contribution to the production of the whole. And this, 
too, would bridge the chasm between school and the 
world outside, by removing it. Children would be put 
more upon their own responsibility, seeking and obtain- 
ing help when it is needed — the time when it is most 
effective for development. The acquisition of facts 
whose significance the children do not see, and many of 
which have little, would then cease to characterize 
education. What is learned would be used in what is 
done, and what is done determined by the stage each has 
attained in his development, with thought both to his 
larger racial life and future modern needs. When educa- 
tion is thus rationalized, the personality of children will 
not be smoothed down to common and uninteresting 
homogeneity, as the present system of mass education 
with its mistaken idea of educational economy seems to 



318 MIND IN THE MAKING 

preservation required the extension of each self to em- 
brace all members of the tribe. Self-interest thus be- 
came absorbed in tribal interest, not at first because of 
any moral ideas about the rights of others, but solely 
because in this way each one's self-interests were better 
served. But these primitive instincts are not without 
meaning for modern life. The readiness of civilized 
boys to fight shows an independent, active, aggressive 
character which, rightly guided, leads to manly courage. 
The determined opponent of civic corruption, the man 
whose onslaughts no threats can stay, was a boy who 
fought for boys' rights. The prevailing social ideas are 
important in giving these tendencies the direction that 
makes for progress, and their very persistence and 
vigor is a necessary element in evolution. 

The power of ideas and actions when intelligently 
applied to conduct has been shown, in a previous 
chapter, in the complete change of life of the New York 
City "toughs" who were given the ideals and ambitions 
of the George Junior Republic. In the slums of the city 
their racial tendencies followed the drift of excitement 
and adventure natural to a criminal environment, but 
with the social suggestions and inspirations of the Re- 
public these instincts found new outlets which led to 
manhood under civilization, while still satisfying the 
organic yearnings of the race. The evolutional im- 
pulse in all this is an atmosphere of moral thoughts and 
actions, but we must take care not to confuse mere 
custom or tradition with morality. 

Animals are dependent upon conditions in the selec- 
tion of which they had no part. Theirs is merely to 
adapt. Man, on the other hand, may assist in bringing 
about conditions amid which the next generation will 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 319 

live. As adaptation is as much a human as an animal 
characteristic, the importance of the environment be- 
comes evident, especially when we remember that in 
man, no less than in the lower animals, those qualities 
that best fit the conditions are selected for survival. 
Alfred Russell Wallace has given a splendid illustration 
of this in his Malay Archipelago. "There are now," 
he wrote, "near five hundred people in Dobbo, of 
various races, all met in this remote corner of the East, 
as they express it, 'to look for their fortune,' to get 
money any way they can. They are most of them 
people who have the very worst reputation for honesty, 
as well as every other form of morality — Chinese, Bugis, 
Ceramese, and half-caste Javanese, with a sprinkling of 
half-wild Papuans from Timor, Babber, and other 
islands — yet all goes as yet very quietly. This modey, 
ignorant, blood-thirsty, thievish population live here 
without the shadow of a government, with no police, no 
court, and no lawyers; yet they do not cut each other's 
throats, do not plunder each other day and night, do 
not fall into the anarchy such a state of things might be 
supposed to lead to. It is very extraordinary! . . . 
Trade is the magic that keeps all at peace and unites 
these discordant elements into a well-behaved com- 
munity." ^ 

The power to modify environment gives man possi- 
bilities not possessed by any of the other animals, but 
it adds vastly to his social responsibility in education. 
The environment is put upon the lower animals as it 
were from overhead, and they are left no choice but 
adaptation or extinction, but man may make his own 
environment, and in this way break a trail for progress. 

• Loc. cil., p. 443. 



320 MIND IN THE MAKING 

The difficulty in applying the principle of natural 
selection to education is that we do not intelligently 
determine who are the fittest. In nature the conditions 
demanding adaptation are comparatively simple and 
definite. This is true also of primitive man and, in- 
deed, quite largely of early civilized society. But the 
enormous enlargement of human interests dims our 
vision. In one respect the lower animals have the ad- 
vantage of us in their instinctive educational methods. 
Their teachers are never troubled by doubts concerning 
the ability of their pupils. All receive equally careful 
training for life. They do not prejudice the future of 
any by an adverse verdict so early in life that the best 
in them may not yet have appeared. They train all in 
the best way for success, which in their case means 
survival, and then leave the final decision to natural 
selection. The conclusion of one of England's fore- 
most statisticians that the senior wrangler has twenty- 
five times the innate ability of the lowest on the honor 
list, because in one year the former obtained 7,500 
credits to 300 of the latter, is one of the humorous re- 
sults of the so-called scientific method of investigation. 
Against the hallucination of such measurements let us 
firmly hold to the facts marshalled in previous pages 
that Darwin's father prognosticated that he would dis- 
grace his family because he cared for nothing but 
shooting, rat-catching, and dogs, that Harriet Mar- 
tineau was a dull child, and Seward "too stupid to 
learn," that Isaac Newton at twelve led his class at the 
foot, that Samuel Johnson was lazy, Robert Fulton a 
dullard, Oliver Goldsmith insufferably dull according 
to his teacher, Byron lowest in his studies, Richard 
Sheridan insignificant as his teacher saw him, John 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 321 

Hunter slow and late to learn, Linnaeus, in view of his 
stupidity, recommended by his pedagogue to be a 
cobbler, and that Dean Swift through "dullness and 
insufRciency," and Goethe likewise from seeming in- 
ability, forfeited their degrees. 

It is not to be forgotten that the survival of the fittest 
is always relative to the conditions demanding adapta- 
tion, and, while animals have no preference, man may 
exercise a choice as to the conditions to which he will 
adapt himself, and this is broadly the distinctive human 
quality. The cleverest boys in the slums of New York 
become the most skilful thieves. In the George Junior 
Republic, as we have seen, these same boys grow into 
the best citizens. Here environment is created and 
chosen by society for the boys ; where it appoints them 
to a slum environment it produces thieves and crim- 
inals; where it gives them a rational environment out 
of the same material it produces first-class types. 

Noiv society may fail to choose for itself the highest 
goal, which is nothing but failure to select the largest 
environment to which to adapt itself. It has the choice 
of various inferior lines of growth. Then "practical" 
education will aim to fit the individual for most perfect 
adaptation to the inferior plane chosen. Maji has 
largely inherited the animal method and only 'partially 
adopted the human. Nature has provided education for 
animals only in a state of stability. For change, im- 
provement, nature has provided animals with nothing 
that can be called a method, for the means it uses is 
destruction — destruction for all who do not conform to 
the needs of the change, and in working out a new 
adaptation, the destruction of all who stray extends 
over an immense period before a new state of stability 



322 MIND IN THE MAKING 

is established with a new instinct to conserve it. Now 
this is an incredibly blundering and costly method 
where the individual is of any account and where the 
goal is of value, both of which conditions are true of 
man. It meets the needs of animals because survival 
is the only thing aimed at, and the "fittest" are those 
adapted to the prevailing conditions. The inade- 
quacy of the principle for man and education becomes 
evident from the fact that the conditions demandintr 
adaptation, if ethically low, will call for and bring out 
men of an inferior type, and in a society of this kind 
the few that might seek to make their adaptation to a 
more universal environment, though they would be the 
best from the standpoint of civilization and progress, 
would be suppressed. But the society choosing this 
principle stagnates and, in the long run, retrogrades. 
Now the purpose of education should not be merely to 
fit each generation for adaptation to the grade that 
society may happen to hold at that time, but to create 
in men the habit of discriminating and of choosing 
that which leads to something higher. 

The importance of this point of view is not lessened 
even if it be shown that natural selection is not the only 
force operative in producing change. New character- 
istics may appear suddenly, so-called mutations, but 
their persistence is, after all, dependent upon the en- 
vironment. True, they may persist without being of 
immediate advantage, but only when conditions are not 
too unfavorable. Here, again, it should be the purpose 
of an intelligently endowed society to make conditions 
that will preserve incipient and less stable individual 
variations that have appeared, according to the sup- 
position, through no direct environmental influence. 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 323 

but which may tend toward a higher social organiza- 
tion. It is not enough that conditions permit the sur- 
vival of such varieties under difficulties; they should 
favor their continuance. While some " mutations " may 
exist under conditions not altogether favorable, others 
will require social recognition, and society should see to 
it that the persistence of such sensitive "mutations" is 
not too hazardous. In this way a tendency to vary, a 
characteristic which means much for progress, may be 
fostered. In his work with plants Vilmorin found, 
according to Darwin, that "when any particular varia- 
tion is desired, the first step is to get the plant to vary 
in any manner, whatever, and to go on selecting the 
most variable individuals, even though they vary in the 
wrong direction, for the fixed character of the species 
being once broken, the desired variation will sooner or 
later appear," and Burbank has recently made the same 
observation. 

Among lower animals variation facilitates new adap- 
tations, but in man it has assumed an added function, 
that of suggesting new departures, new lines of prog- 
ress, and in doing this it makes important contribu- 
tions to the growth of experience. Education is always 
in danger of arrest from compression by immediate or 
"practical" aims. It should be of a sort that admits 
of indefinite expansion, so that in the end it may be- 
come commensurate with life; but this capacity for 
enlargement requires something more than knowledge. 
Inability to see this led to the fallacy of the educational 
system of the Middle Ages, and we have fallen heir to 
their infatuation for formal training and learning. 
Information did fairly well for the simple conditions of 
early times when the necessary adaptations of life were 



324 MIND IN THE MAKING 

neither complicated nor numerous, but if education is 
to be adequate to the hfe of to-day, it must take the 
whole plexus of social forces into account, and these 
social forces are, after all, only biological principles 
working in human society, to be intelligently inter- 
preted and used for the greater life of society. 

One of the elements in progress, and by no means an 
unimportant one, is that of which we have just been 
speaking, and which we may call suggestive variation. 
The world is moving with constantly accelerated ve- 
locity, not merely because we have more information 
to-day than yesterday, but because what we know 
means more to us, and this alchemistic power of getting 
out of facts something not superficially visible in them 
is mind's contribution to progress. Now education has 
never appreciated the importance of variation in human 
society, and for that reason has never set itself to de- 
velop it. The very capacity for variation, implying 
as it does a certain flexibility, facilitates ready adapta- 
tion in the individual, and its suggestive influence on 
society promotes adaptation in others. The means, of 
course, by which this influence becomes effective is 
speaking and writing. The function of education here 
is to develop a mental attitude that is friendly to varia- 
tion, and to train to rightly see and interpret relations. 
There seems to be an impression that if we give a 
child or a man information enough he will at some time 
and in some way — though we are never told just when 
or how — learn to apply it to the problems of life. But 
the facts do not justify this view. The astonishing 
velocity with which science and industry are moving 
to-day calls for correspondingly rapid adjustment, and 
owing to defective principles of education we are unable 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 325 

to meet the demand. This is the reason for the conflict 
between labor and capital. Industry has advanced so 
fast that society, with its instinctive method of react- 
ing, could not keep up with it. Not educated to vary 
flexibly we cannot adjust ourselves in time to new con- 
ditions. We are confused and baflrled by them. The 
intellectual element enters into human adaptations, 
and the more rapid the change the more conscious and 
purposive must adjustment become. Fitting for this 
adjustment belongs peculiarly to education. But here 
we fail. We have given too narrow an interpretation 
to education. Our narrow theory regards it as a prep- 
aration to adapt ourselves to a certain set of con- 
ditions, i. e., those found existing. The result is intel- 
lectual rigidity and obstinate resistance to evolution. 
The mental processes, moulded in certain mechanical 
forms of activity, find hardship in readjustment when 
conditions change, and, as we have seen, change is the 
rule to-day. Here, again, we are adhering too closely 
to the animal method, where movement is slow and 
rapid adaptation is not expected. Education should 
seek to develop a mental plasticity, a capacity for un- 
derstanding and getting control of new situations, and 
for making them. 

To-day the great changes are social. Evolutionary 
conditions are pressing us toward a fundamental re- 
construction of society. The reconstruction is a pro- 
found social variation. Education — that is to say, those 
who have the magnificent educational equipment of the 
nation in charge — should have foreseen this and made 
the new generation of youths ready for it, should have 
prepared them to recognize it as another great unfold- 
ment of man, comprehending, assisting, and developing 



326 MIND IN THE MAKING 

it. But education has been engrossed in the compara- 
tively petty role of teaching lessons. It has fitted chil- 
dren for immediate, instinctive environment, quite 
omitting rational, or higher social environment. The 
result is present conditions — a practical dead-lock of 
social forces. Education cannot truly awaken the in- 
terest or command the confidence of the people until 
it assumes the higher function. 

The present obstructors of social reconstruction or 
variation are the ill-educated, though perhaps very 
much schooled. For schooling and education, as again 
and again indicated, are not the same. The new social 
variation now beginning is an industrial readjustment 
which shall enable each individual, regardless of the 
accident of birth, to realize all of his native powers to 
their full value; and this will promote progress by re- 
moving artificial restrictions on individual variation. 
It would be very easy in this country, on the basis of 
accepted American principles, to effect the transition if 
educators, whose business is moulding minds to grasp 
the larger aspect of things and training them in the 
power to alter their views instead of reposing in fixed 
ones, had done their work. The current method is to 
impede social transitions; the intelligent course is to 
facilitate them. When educators rise above mere 
schoolmastering, social dead-locks and cataclysms will 
be of the past. The changes they involve will be wel- 
comed. 

While, therefore, the animal method of education is 
for static life — stability — with man it must be for dy- 
namic life — change, improvement. And yet man's 
course in the past has not been complimentary to his 
intelligence, since many, if not most, of his important 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 327 

alterations for the better have not been made by intelli- 
gent choice of the change itself, nor by choice of the 
best way, but he has resisted as long as possible, until 
life became so bad that nature by some kind of punish- 
ment or eruption forced improvement upon him, as she 
does upon animals, by her power of destruction. This 
is the principle of revolutions. Sometimes they succeed 
in raising society to the level of the few higher individ- 
uals, but often they are suppressed by the forces in 
resistance to variation and adaptation. 

This adaptation to a large nature brings with it a 
complete mental reorganization. Nor, indeed, is this 
lacking in physical confirmation. We can already 
trace certain corresponding physical changes in the 
constitution of the brain — the increase in association- 
fibres in certain parts of the cortex shortly after eighteen 
years of age, indicated, as earlier stated, by Kaes's in- 
vestigations, and the extension of Flechsig's association- 
centres in higher animals, and particularly in man. 
Some of these cerebral changes seem to occur when 
increasing complexities of life are making new demands 
on intelligence. 

Recent studies,^ suggesting that the human brain has 
not increased in average size for 20,000 years or more, 
also point to improvement in cerebral organization as 
the distinctive feature of the civilized brain. Further, 
as already observed, both Kaes and Vulpius have shown 
that there are additions to the association-fibres in 
parts of the brain long after thirty-eight years of age. 

Every age brings its change of view. Acts that were 
once considered the most virtuous are to-day abomina- 
ble. Why did not the people of past ages see at least 

1 American Journal of Insanity, Vol. LVIII, p. 1. 



328 MIND IN THE MAKING 

some of these things as we do and know that they were 
wrong ? What will future generations say of us in this 
respect ? Are we never to reach a stage of culture that 
will enable us to think out these questions experiment- 
ally and intellectually, so that we may jump the trying 
experience of intervening ages? Are we never to 
eliminate dark ages ? The processes of human prog- 
ress are extremely crude. They are simply naturalis- 
tic. Now one of the ultimate functions of education, 
considered in the large, is to develop a science of prog- 
ress. The naturalistic way is too expensive. 

We are comparing the animals, with their instinctive 
view of nature in its simplicity — an inherited mode of 
behavior developed on the basis of narrow experience 
— with man's mode of action. Through a more varied 
experience man has developed his larger view of na- 
ture as a complex, but he acts to-day preponderantly 
on the instinctive method of the animals. While he has 
acquired the use of reason, this has been only grafted 
upon the instinctive method of reaction. The cause of 
man's tardiness in abandoning the instinctive and 
adopting the intelligent method is that science is of 
modern and comparatively recent growth, and it is 
science that has entirely changed our conception of 
things, by giving us a new view of life which reveals more 
of the inner nature of the universe. This has made the 
simple animal view inadequate. Wireless telegraphy, 
by which England and America converse with one an- 
other through space, the X-ray with which we see 
through matter, and radio-activity which has estab- 
lished the complexity of the atom, indicate the in- 
credible revolution that is going on in the character 
and scope of man's universe. But the animal takes 



RECONSTRUCTION OF NATURE 329 

the simple, immediate, and direct view of the world. 
It assumes and accepts without question that it sees the 
whole thing in its simple perceptions, and man has 
hardly at all emancipated himself from this method of 
interpreting. 

We have found ability to profit by experiences the 
test of survival among all animals. With organisms 
low in the scale this learning is not an individual matter, 
but belongs to the species and takes the form of adapta- 
tion, and the advantage is bought at an enormous cost 
of life. A little higher, and individuals break away 
somewhat from inherited modes of behavior, and ac- 
tion begins to be influenced by past experience. Soon 
this becomes common, and the animal may then prop- 
erly be said to learn, though there is no evidence that 
at this stage utilization of experience is ever conscious. 
When consciousness once becomes a factor in deter- 
mining action, capacity to profit by experience is a 
measure of intelligence, and it is just this increased 
sensitiveness to experience that gives the facility in ad- 
justment of which we have been speaking. Intelli- 
gence restricts the action of natural selection by en- 
larging the individual's range of adaptation, and by 
giving insight into conditions and the power to create 
new ones. There is greater latitude for variation with- 
out destruction, and variation, again, may suggest other 
lines of progress by means of which nature's selection 
may be guided, so that she may find those fittest who 
are most appreciative of the larger, more universal, 
environment, which it is education's privilege to con- 
ceive and foster. 






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